Look To The Stars
by ByeByeBirdie
Summary: No one thought that Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy would become friends, least of all themselves. They just wanted to find a way to navigate their seventh year. And then they just wanted to find a way to navigate the Real World. But friends they were. Right before they weren't.
1. How It All Began

**LOOK TO THE STARS**

By ByeByeBirdie

Chapter 1: How It All Began

* * *

The first time they slept together was unplanned. Scorpius was having a bad day, Rose happened to walk in on him shouting at his Potions notes for being too illegible, and when she laughed, Scorpius felt as if he had two choices: throw his textbook at her or snog her.

Rose was incredibly skilled with a wand so he thought the first might backfire on him quickly so he went with Option 2.

One minute, he was glaring at her and the next he was pressing his lips to hers in an unexpected frenzy.

As he predicted, she pulled back with a look of bewilderment on her face. "What are you doing?"

He shrugged. "Snogging you."

Her eyes narrowed curiously. "We don't snog, Malfoy."

"Who says we can't start?"

She frowned. "We are in the middle of our last N.E.W.T.-level year with Head duties thrown on top, not to mention your Quidditch schedule and then there's always the daunting task of keeping up with Albus' latest flavor of the week, and you want to spend time snogging a girl you barely tolerate?"

He rolled his eyes and sat back down on the couch, reaching up to rub his throbbing temples. "I am so stressed out, for all the reasons you just said, that I can't fucking see straight. So if I could somehow force all this bad energy elsewhere leaving me with more time to focus on my responsibilities, I am all for it. And you just so happen to be the one standing in front of me."

She tilted her head to the side. "And you really think shagging me is the answer?"

He was slightly taken aback by that question. "Who said anything about shagging?"

She surprised both of them by smirking. "Do you honestly think a couple of unexciting snog sessions is going to fix anything? Doubtful. Nope, if we have any chance of making it through this year unscathed, we are going to need the whole nine yards. And in case I'm being unclear in any way, yes, I'm talking about sex."

He gaped at her. "Are you proposing what I think your'e proposing?"

She chuckled. "Do you want to have sex with me or not, Malfoy?"

He did. He really did. Not because he liked her, because the truth was she mattered quite little to him, but because the idea of being able to push aside his stress for just a few moments of desperate euphoria sounded so strangely perfect, and definitely necessary.

So shag they did.

They slept together when they could over the next few months, which didn't happen as much as they would have liked as their schedules clashed more often than not. But when things got really bad, they were there for each other in the only way they knew how to be. And slowly, so slowly neither of them really noticed at the time, they started to turn to each other for more than just sex. They'd lie naked next to one another and talk about the future and their dreams, their fears and insecurities, their secrets and their passions. They started studying with each other late night, quizzing each other on the latest spells they were learning. They argued about Quidditch and laughed about their over-eager prefects. They became friends. Real friends. Before then, they were mere acquaintances, the only common denominator prior to their arrangement was their mutual friendship with Albus Potter. But as it turned out, they had a lot more in common than Albus Potter.

Graduation came and went and the Quidditch pitch was swarmed by students and families alike. Scorpius' parents were there and he said his obligatory hellos and thanked them for coming before they disappeared not too long after that. He was weaving his way through the crowds of squealing students excited about becoming Real World citizens and the tearful parents whining about their grown-up children, looking to escape back to the castle for some much-needed quiet, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Whirling around, he smiled at Rose. "Where are you off to in such a hurry?" she questioned.

He noticed her family off to the side, most of their attention now on him with wary eyes. Even though he had been friends with Albus since first year, he knew that his family, as comfortable as they tried to make him, felt a slight bit of awkwardness at one of their own befriending the son of a man, and a family, who had been so against their own family many years prior. He knew Albus' family tried to let it go. But the tension was always there.

Not to mention, Albus' older brother, James, hated him and everything he apparently stood for.

"Nowhere in particular," he said to Rose with a shrug. "Just soaking it all in."

If she had seen Scorpius' family already abandoning him, she made no mention of it. "I'll come with," she suggested. "My family is already driving me up a wall and I've only been around them for ten minutes."

He shook his head, feeling an unexpected need to clear his head. "No, stay with your family. This is as much their day as it is yours."

He quickly disappeared, though not before he heard James ask his cousin why she was following in Albus' footsteps by associating with the Malfoy boy. He pretended it didn't bother him.

It did.

Scorpius was finishing packing up his things a few hours later, sad to see Hogwarts go and yet excited for the next chapter of his life, when he heard familiar footsteps on the stairwell leading up to his private bedroom in the Head Dorm. Glancing over his shoulder, he smiled as Rose appeared in the doorway.

"Shouldn't you be with your family right about now?"

She shrugged. "I had my time with them. And now I'm here."

He was grateful for even though he told her to go be with her family, he also really appreciated the company.

With a yawn, Scorpius dropped on to the edge of his bed. "Can't believe we survived seven years at this place."

Rose joined him on the bed. "We did more than survive," she corrected. "We thrived."

He met her gaze with a smile. "Y'know, Weasley, when I first met you, I thought you were a spoiled, bratty Know-it-All riding the coattails of her hero parents."

She rolled her eyes. "And I thought you were an arrogant, pretentious little shit who could see no wrong in his parents' past."

He looked at her. "Thank you for sharing the real you with me."

She smiled. "Right back at ya."

They didn't sleep together on that fateful afternoon, for it had always just been an excuse to relieve some of the stress going on in their lives and neither could pretend on their very last day of school that they had any more stress to alleviate. So instead they just talked as friends would often do without the complication of shagging and they both pretended that that was perfectly fine with them.

It wasn't.

Not that they were ready to admit that.

(Not yet anyway.)

And as midnight neared and the day of their graduation came to an end, Rose turned to him and said, "Do you think we'll be friends once we leave this place?"

He met the curiosity in her gaze and smiled. "You can't get rid of me that easily, Rose Weasley."

And so they continued their friendship outside of Hogwarts, much to the surprise of Albus who had assumed that whatever genial phase they were going through would come to an abrupt halt after graduation.

"When did you two become such close friends?" Albus asked Scorpius on a Saturday morning in November as they wandered into St. Mungo's. Scorpius worked in the medicinal potions lab while Albus was training to be a Healer.

"Who?" Scorpius questioned.

"You and Rose," Albus said, almost annoyed.

He hesitated. "We're not that close," he argued.

"You see her more than you see me and that's saying a lot considering I live down the hall from you and I work in the same building as you."

"You're exaggerating."

"And you're in denial," Albus huffed.

Scorpius let out a hefty sigh before offering his mate a shrug. "We spent an awful lot of time together in our seventh year, Al. We were forced to, what with the both of us being Heads of the school and all. I guess it developed into a friendship."

Albus appeared to be annoyed by that revelation, looking at him with curious eyes, and Scorpius quickly caught on. Sighing, he said, "Just say it."

Albus' lips pursed. "Say what?"

"Whatever the hell it is you aren't saying that you want to say."

Albus stopped short and turned to his mate, blurting out, "You sleeping with my cousin, Scorp?"

_A long time ago, I was_.

Scorpius thought it was far wiser to just say, "No."

Albus hesitated before saying, "Good. Keep it that way."

Scorpius decided it would also be wise for Albus never to find out that he had shagged Rose Weasley.

Repeatedly.

He was going to warn Rose that Albus was asking questions but when he wandered into Rose's apartment later that week, he was caught off-guard by loud music blaring and Rose dancing rather goofily around her living room couch. He just smiled, watching her from the small entranceway as she threw all caution to the wind.

When she caught him staring at her, she felt slight embarrassment, but only for a minute, before she laughed and said, "C'mon, dance with me!"

With his own laugh, he shook his head. "Hell no. I'm not a dancer."

She twirled around, nearly tripping on her feet, and said sarcastically, "Oh, yeah, because I'm clearly so good at it."

She wasn't.

But she was still fun to watch.

"You're crazy, y'know that?" he teased, folding his arms across his body and leaning up against the living room doorframe.

"And you're friends with me so what does that say about you, Malfoy?"

That he was crazy about her.

(If only he had realized it at the time.)

"I guess it says I'm crazy, too," he chuckled and before he knew it, he was joining her on the makeshift living room and the two of them danced the night away as if they were the only two people that mattered in the world in that moment.

Rose hated her job for it was songwriting she really loved. But that wasn't exactly paying the bills, nor did she feel it was a respectable career path for a former Head Girl, so there she was playing secretary at her older cousin's law firm for a bunch of pretentious, histrionic wizarding lawyers who quite possibly believed the sun shone out of their arses.

She was duplicating several copies of a deposition, running through possible song lyrics in her head, when her cousin's voice broke her from her momentary reverie.

"Er…I think you have enough copies of that already."

Rose glanced down and sure enough she had been on duplicating autopilot. Grimacing, she banished half of the stack into the shredding pile and pocketed her wand. "How goes the legal world, Molly?" she asked.

"Intense as always," she replied with a shrug. "How goes the songwriting world?"

"I wouldn't know. I spend too much time at this place to get any actual songwriting done."

Molly leaned up against Rose's cubicle desk with a hesitant frown. "You hate it here, don't you."

"…no."

Molly rose an eyebrow.

"Okay, yes," Rose exhaled. "But hell, this firm pays more than I could get anywhere else so I'm fine with it."

Molly knew it was a lie but didn't pursue it. "When do I get to hear some of your wicked songs?"

"Well, I'm almost done with my latest song so I'm thinking…never?" Rose teased for she didn't like to share her lyrics with anyone unless it was a group of random nobodies at an open mic night. Open mic nights in which she definitely didn't invite her friends or her family, too afraid that they'd either hate what she was writing or find every way possible to humiliate her for that is what they did best. No, she much preferred to keep her music to herself.

Molly rolled her eyes. "How are you going to make it in the music business if you don't even have the courage to sing to the people who care about you?"

"I'm not looking to make it in the music business," Rose argued. "I'm just looking to keep it as a hobby."

"While you continue working at a job you hate," she drawled. "Sure, that sounds practical."

Rose wasn't surprised by her cousin's words for Albus and Scorpius told her all the time that it was okay to shoot for the stars. She ignored them every time, not because she didn't want to go after her dreams but because she was scared to. It's not as if the songwriting business was an easy one to get into so there was a very good chance she'd fail and failure just wasn't something she was very adept at handling. And the truth was, she feared what the world might say about her. She had been Head Girl, the top of her class at Hogwarts, and the idea that that same girl could go into an industry that was full of insecure, money-hungry, shallow people whose brains took a backseat to their voices seemed like something that should have been beneath her.

Too bad it was one of the only things in her life that made her happy.

She saw Scorpius that night, who dropped by for no reason at all except to say hi. And she told him what Molly said about Rose refusing to let others hear her songs.

"She's right," said Scorpius with a shrug and just when Rose thought he was betraying her by not immediately taking her side, he added, "I've heard you sing some of your songs before. At least I think they are your songs. If they were, they were really good. And I wouldn't tell you that if they weren't."

She had to do a double-take. "When the hell did you hear me sing?"

He rolled his eyes. "How about all of those times at Hogwarts when you were in the shower singing without a care in the world, probably thinking that I couldn't hear you from the common room when I most definitely could."

Her jaw dropped open. "But…how…what…" she sputtered. Trying to collect her thoughts, she shook her head and tried again. "How come you never told me that?"

"If I had told you, you would have stopped," he said matter-of-factly.

She felt her cheeks begin to heat up and chose to take a sip of her wine to bide her time. "My music is for me, Malfoy."

"And for semi-crowded bars and coffee houses during their open mic nights."

Her cheeks burned brighter. "How did you…" she trailed off, once again shaking her head. "You know too much about me."

He chuckled. "Ironic, isn't it? Seeing as we only really ever became friends less than a year ago."

Rose couldn't help but think back to the first time she and Scorpius ever shagged, on a snowy Hogwarts day in early December a little less than one year earlier. Before then, she had often dismissed the blonde Slytherin, not finding him worth much of her time. She didn't hate him but she wouldn't have said she liked him either. And then they slept together and suddenly everything changed. And now here they were just the two of them nearly twelve months later as if they had been friends their whole lives.

"Tell me something about you that no one knows," Rose asked, desperate to change the subject.

Scorpius studied her, looking at her as if he was peering into her soul and said, "I hate strawberries."

Rose made a show of rolling her eyes. "I'm sure there is someone out there that knows you hate strawberries. Albus probably. Your parents perhaps. You have to give me something better than that."

"Hm, nope, I think I'm going to stick with the strawberries thing," he teased. "Oh, and I have a half-sister. But mostly the strawberries thing."

She did a double-take, her eyes growing with bewilderment. "You have a half-sister?"

Scorpius' lips pursed almost immediately, wondering why he had even said that aloud except for the sole reason that while he had always had trouble sharing personal details of his life with most people, he never seemed to have a problem sharing personal details with her. "I don't know if you're aware of this but my family is all kinds of fucked up," he said with a teasing smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "My father most of all."

"_You're_ not fucked up," she reassured him.

He almost believed her.

"My father had an affair. Several actually," he muttered, ignoring her comment altogether. "One of the women had a baby some years ago. I suppose the girl must be seven or eight by now."

"You suppose?" Rose questioned. "Shouldn't you know how old your sister is?"

"Half-sister," he corrected in a murmur. "And no because I've never met her. I only know she exists because I came across a photograph of the girl taped to the top of my father's desk in his study. On the back, it had a date written and it said 'Draco - your daughter at six months old.'" After a slight hesitation, he added, "I don't even know her name."

Rose knew little about Scorpius' family for he refused to talk about it. He had grown up in a broken household, his parents estranged from each other his whole life. His father was cold and his mother unforgiving and yet they stayed together because the very idea of a divorce was far more scandalous than any of the immoral things they did and said to each other. So Scorpius had learned at a very young age that it was better to bottle in your emotions instead of letting them out and he's been practicing that art ever since. So even though Rose was an expert at complaining about her overbearing family, he rarely complained about his for it hurt less to not talk about it than to dwell on things he couldn't change.

So she sincerely appreciated him sharing a small tidbit of his personal life, especially something that must be so painful.

And she blamed her unexpected appreciation for her next brilliant decision.

She kissed him.

He didn't even flinch, kissing her back like they hadn't gone six months without shagging. Drinks were abandoned, clothes were shed, and before they even knew what was happening, they were shagging on Rose's living room couch.

When they were both coming down from their high, Sirius glanced over at a very naked Rose and said, "Well, I have to say, I did not see that coming."

She grinned sheepishly. "I'm sorry I jumped you," she teased.

He threw his head back and laughed. "A beautiful girl never has to apologize for jumping me."

She looked at him with a curious smile. "You think I'm beautiful?"

And he looked her right in the eyes and said, "You're gorgeous, Rose, in every way possible."

And maybe, _just maybe_, if they had both admitted to each other in that moment how they really felt, it wouldn't have all fallen apart so easily.

(Only problem was, neither of them knew how they felt until it was too late.)

Since the one thing that Scorpius and Rose were so consistently brilliant at was keeping their emotions at a far distance, they fell into yet another pattern of shagging each other for the fun of it, no strings attached. Scorpius blamed how busy he was at work and Rose blamed her attempt to balance her long hours at a horrible job with her songwriting, but they both knew that not getting their hearts involved just felt easier. He'd show up at her place after a grueling day at work, she'd call him up when she needed a break from her life, and they'd share a few beers, laugh about the latest gossip, and ultimately wind up in her bedroom. It was casual, it was easy, and it was about the only thing in their lives that they could actually count on.

Christmas was rapidly approaching. Rose was excited about it, chattering away about the big Potter-Weasley extravaganza that the holidays always seemed to be. Scorpius was the opposite of excited, changing the subject any time Rose asked him about his traditions.

His tradition considered of him counting the hours until Christmas was over.

He thought it was better than he didn't admit that out loud.

"Spiked eggnog for the lady," Scorpius said a few days before Christmas Eve as he handed her a cup in bed. He placed his on the nightstand and crawled into bed beside her, leaning up against the headboard with a stifled yawn.

Rose took a sip and smiled. "Damn, that's good."

"I may not be so great with the making of dinner, but alcoholic drinks I can do," he teased, taking a sip of his own.

"I love a good eggnog," she said as she curled up beside him. "But I think peppermint hot cocoa is probably my favorite holiday drink."

"A good choice. It's also good spiked with Kahlua."

Rose laughed. "Do you enjoy any holiday drinks that aren't spiked?"

He pretended to think about it. "Can't say that I do, no."

She let out another laugh quickly followed by an eyeroll. "I love the holidays. There's something so magical about them. It's as if the whole world changes. The lights, the music, the decorations, the traditions. It feels almost perfect."

Maybe for her but Scorpius' holidays were far from perfect.

Rose stole a glance his way. "You don't agree?"

"I didn't say that."

"You not saying anything pretty much said it for me."

He frowned and then shrugged.

She nudged him with her shoulder. "Don't get untalkative with me now," she accused. "What's running through your head, Malfoy?"

Rose had never been particularly privy to his holiday plans in the past as the two of them had only just begun fooling around right before the prior year's holidays so he didn't blame her for being curious or even confused. And if Scorpius was better at hiding his feelings towards his less than ideal family, he would have shrugged it off. But he found himself unable to do that this time. Not with her.

"You view the holidays as a celebration," he murmured. "I view them as an obligation."

If she was surprised, she hid it well. "Your family not into the whole Christmas scene?"

He chose his next words carefully. "My family prefers the time spent away from each other more than the time spent with each other."

That saddened Rose deeply. She knew that Scorpius didn't have the best relationship with his family but she was perhaps learning it was far worse than she ever even imagined. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said, shaking his head. "I know the way my family does things is completely different from the way your family does them but that's okay."

Rose hardly thought that was okay but decided that a shift in topic was in order. "There has to be something about the holidays you like."

"Yes," he said, holding up his cup. "The spiked eggnog."

She gave him a look and he laughed. Hesitating, he said, "The music. It's the one thing I don't tire of hearing every year."

She grinned. "Ah, well you know, music _is _my specialty."

"I do know that," he chuckled. "Even though you still refuse to let me hear you sing."

She rolled her eyes. "What's your favorite Christmas song?"

"You're changing the subject."

"Yes I am. So what's your favorite Christmas song?"

He chuckled and said almost immediately, for he didn't have to think about it, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

She nodded. "A very worthy choice," she said. "Mine's 'Auld Lang Syne.'"

"That's not a Christmas song."

"It's a _holiday _song."

"You didn't ask me what my favorite holiday song was, you asked me—_oof_," he said as she shoved him.

"You're a prat, Scorpius Malfoy."

"And you're sleeping with that prat so what does that say about you?" he teased.

She shrugged and leaned in, her lips nearly touching his ear before saying, "That I apparently can't get rid of you that easily."

He turned to look at her, a smile on his face. "Are you trying to get rid of me, Weasley?"

She closed the already small gap between them and kissed him. "Never."

The holidays came and went. Rose spent it with her entire extended family, two full days of joy and laughter as she caught up with her family, played and sang Christmas carols on her uncle's piano, passed gifts back and forth with her parents, drank her weight in cocoa, and remembered after two full days just how much she really did love her crazy, devoted family.

Scorpius spent it with his family, too. Only it wasn't joyous and there was no laughter. His mother burned Christmas dinner because she was too busy getting drunk off wine, his father holed himself up in his office for most of the day so as not to have to deal with people, his grandparents pretended everything was fine because ignoring their feelings was the only thing Malfoys ever really excelled in, and after two full days he remembered just how much he really hated his detached, distant family.

When Rose had asked him on New Year's Eve how his Christmas was, he said it was fine.

He was lying.

She knew he was lying.

But they said nothing more.

Instead, they went back to her place and rang in the New Year with a shag.

It was the first time Scorpius realized that he didn't shag Rose because he was stressed or overwhelmed or needed a break from his life. He shagged her because he liked being with her.

(He decided to keep that thought to himself however.)

The two of them were out at a pub on the Monday after Easter when Scorpius found himself chatting up a girl at the bar as he waited for his drink order. She seemed nice enough, a bubbly blonde with an infectious laugh, and they seemed to hit it off. Until Scorpius made the mistake of introducing himself to her.

"I'm Scorpius Malfoy," he said, extending a hand her way.

He saw the surprise in her eyes, as brief as it was, before she reached out her own hand and shook his.

Scorpius felt the stiffness in the simple gesture.

"Annie Macmillan," she spoke.

Scorpius heard the iciness in her tone.

And when she excused herself to the loo a few minutes later, Scorpius knew she wasn't coming back.

He trudged back over to the table Rose was currently occupying and handed her beer to her.

"She was pretty," Rose teased as she took a sip of her beer.

Scorpius shrugged.

"She was flirting with you," Rose continued. "Even from over here, I could tell."

"She was flirting with me," he drawled, "Right before she wasn't."

Rose's brow furrowed. "What does that mean?"

He shrugged. "It means I'm a Malfoy."

That didn't seem to clear anything up for her. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

He took a large gulp of his firewhisky, looking anywhere but into Rose's naïve eyes, and repeated, "It means I'm a Malfoy."

It dawned on Rose then what Scorpius was trying to say and her heart ached for him for she knew it couldn't be easy being a part of a family who had made questionable choices in their past.

She reached over and placed her hand on his forearm. "If anyone chooses to judge you based on a name then I have to say, they're missing out on someone pretty great, Scorpius," she spoke softly.

He looked at her, both surprised and grateful for the compliment. "That might be the first time you ever called me by my first name."

She opened her mouth to argue but she realized he wasn't wrong. Calling him by his last name had been nothing more than a habit she had picked up on as a mere first year and when they became friends, it hadn't occurred to her to stop.

Until now.

"I may call you by the Malfoy name," she said with a shrug, "But I've never judged you for it."

Her words almost made up for Annie Macmillan blowing him off because of his surname.

Almost.

Coming up on one year in the medicinal potions lab came with a raise and a promotion for Scorpius who was moved to the Rare and Foreign Ingredients Department which meant his future would be tasked with not only researching and studying the many elements of each potion St. Mungo's brews but he'd also be traveling to unusual places around the globe to personally collect valuable ingredients needed for those potions.

"_Travel_, Rose," he spoke gleefully. "I get to _travel_. Everywhere! South America, Russia, the North Pole, Madagascar. Can you believe it?"

"Considering you've told me this about ten times already, I'd be remiss not to believe it," she teased, holding up her wine glass. "Cheers, Scorpius. Congratulations."

She said it with a smile but as his career took off in ways he hadn't ever expected, hers in the music industry was very much at a standstill. Not because things weren't going the way she wanted them to but because she wasn't even trying.

She made a promise to herself right then and there to do everything she could to get her songs out in the world.

It was an empty promise and she knew it.

She continued to write, almost on a daily basis, and filled notebook after notebook with the words that just seemed to overflow out of her. Some of the songs were good, some of them weren't, but in the end, she loved them all because they came from her heart.

She spent some time wondering if anyone other than herself and a few no-named people in a coffee shop or two would ever hear them but she was too afraid to do anything about it so she didn't.

Summer came and went and the day before Hugo and Lily were set to return to Hogwarts for their final year, Molly announced that she was engaged to her long-term boyfriend of two years. The family went nuts, breaking out into squeals of delight and tears of joy and detailed questions.

Rose watched them all without saying much of anything, wondering why the very idea of marriage sounded barbaric and unappealing.

She blamed it on the fact that she hadn't had a boyfriend since she was fourteen years old.

All while wondering if love just wasn't in the cards for her.

That night as she and Scorpius lay naked in her bed, she asked him his thoughts on marriage.

He answered honestly. "Not good."

Her eyebrow shot up. "Oh? How so?"

He could have said that he had spent eighteen years watching his distant parents destroy the supposed sanctity of marriage. That he had feared at even a young age of turning out just like them. He could have said that the very idea of loving someone and being loved sounded far more intimidating than it probably should have. That his parents made it seem like marriage was nothing but empty promises and broken hearts. That he blamed his parents for making him believe it was better not to have a heart than to risk it ever getting broken.

Instead, he said, "I guess I just don't believe in it."

She grew quiet, trying to get a read on him and failing. "You don't believe in what exactly?"

"All of it. Love, marriage, commitment. There's no guarantee that any of that will last forever," he murmured. "You know what I do believe in? Happiness. If there is one person in your life who makes you happy, then by all means, stay with them forever. But I think that 'one person' will only be the one for a while. Because nothing is forever. And marriage just forces people to stay together for far longer than they probably should."

His words were heartfelt and profound, and had Rose wondering for just a second if she'd ever find the happiness he was referring to, but Rose detected mostly bitterness as he spoke. And she knew without a shadow of the doubt that that bitterness stemmed from his own parents' broken marriage.

But if he didn't want to talk about it, she wouldn't ask him to.

"I don't think I believe in it either," Rose found herself saying as her gaze wistfully lifted towards the ceiling.

"Why not?"

It took her a while to answer. "When Molly announced she was engaged, I felt nothing," she murmured. "As she gushed about the proposal and the ring and the happily ever after, I wasn't sitting there wondering when my fairytale prince would come along. I didn't daydream about my own wedding. I didn't care about any of that. Aren't I supposed to care?"

Scorpius wasn't surprised by Rose's hesitation. She rarely did anything unless she already knew the outcome, too scared to go after the unknown. Failure wasn't an option for her so instead of even trying new things, new and scary things, she preferred to live in a world where change didn't happen.

"You're nineteen," Scorpius eventually said for he knew telling her she was scared of change would be asking for an argument. "You have your whole lifetime to care should you choose to."

She wasn't entirely convinced but instead of saying that, she rolled over on her side, an impish smile filling her expression, and said, "In the meantime, I choose you." And then she leaned over and kissed him.

At the time, she thought she meant she was choosing sex. What she didn't realize, or perhaps she was just too afraid to see it, was that she was choosing something so much more than that.

"Well," he said with his own smile as he reached over and absentmindedly twirled a strand of her stray hair around his finger, "For what it's worth, you'd make a beautiful bride."

She looked at him, surprised and flattered by the unexpected comment. "I suppose that counts for something should I ever do find myself entertaining the idea of walking down the aisle."

He chuckled. "Let me be the only cynical one here, Rose," he spoke. His tone was in jest but they both knew he was being sincere. "You deserve more than that."

Rose looked at him, sensing the struggle in his words, and nestling into his shoulder, she whispered, "So do you."

He wished he could believe that but he wasn't so sure.

On a beautiful Sunday evening in November after Rose had just wrapped up a trio of her own songs at a wizarding pub's open mic night, Rose was approached by a tall man in a suit who offered her a paying gig at a winery singing soul covers. She was surprised because she hadn't considered herself much of a singer but the man insisted and told her that he'd love for her to sing a few of her own songs as well. She decided that it couldn't hurt so reluctantly agreed.

It was the first time she was ever "discovered" at an open mic and she was both excited and terrified. She had never been paid money to sing before and she feared she wouldn't be good enough. So she did what she did best and told no one.

The gig went better than she ever could have imagined.

She assumed she'd be background music, ignored by most. But the patrons were enraptured, hanging on to her every word and applauding after every song, even the ones she wrote herself. It was the happiest she had ever been.

She showed up at Scorpius' apartment door that night with a beaming smile and for the first time since she graduated Hogwarts, she was considering telling someone all about her music and her songwriting inspiration and how happy it all made her. It was the first time she felt like sharing what she had always believed to be such an intimate part of her life, the first time she wanted to shout from the rooftops that Rose Weasley was no secretary, that she was a singer and a songwriter.

When Scorpius opened the door, the excitement inside of her didn't come out in word form. Instead, she dropped the guitar in her hands to the floor and with a grin, pulled him into her and pressed her lips to his like never before.

Perhaps she should have taken the time to check that his apartment was empty before kissing him so as not to be completely taken off-guard when a gorgeous brunette appeared behind Scorpius' shoulder.

Rose stepped back, horrified and embarrassed, and stuttered out a very ineloquent, "Oh, uh, sorry for…yeah. Okay, bye."

She grabbed her guitar, rushed out of the building, and apparated home, the happiness she had felt just moments earlier all but gone.

And then she wondered why for Scorpius was in his every right to have a girl at his apartment that wasn't her. They weren't dating, far from it, and he was allowed to have other female companions. It didn't bother her.

Well, it shouldn't bother her.

So why did it?

(She knew the answer to that question. She just wasn't willing to admit it yet.)

When Scorpius turned around to face the girl in his apartment, he could tell she was trying hard not to laugh. "Is that how you greet all the people who show up at your door?" she teased.

"It's not how I greeted you," he fired back, rolling his eyes at her.

"Thank Merlin for that. My boyfriend might have taken it the wrong way."

He sighed and glanced towards the hallway, still exposed as he had yet to close the door. "I have to go after her," he spoke guiltily.

She expected that so she reached for her cloak off the rack and draped it over her shoulders. "I wasn't aware you had a girlfriend, Scorpius," she commented dismissively. "You don't ever talk about her."

"She's not my girlfriend," he muttered.

Her eyebrow shot up. "Why not?"

He opened his mouth to give her all the reasons why they were just friends.

But nothing came out.

She smirked and patted his shoulder, almost condescendingly. "Looks like our little Scorpius is growing up."

Any other time, he would have scowled. This time, he was too busy wondering what he was getting himself into with Rose to even acknowledge his coworker's words.

He thought that perhaps it might be best to stay away from Rose, at least for a little while.

Which did not explain why he was at her doorstep moments later.

When he knocked and she answered, she had a flustered apology all ready to go. Instead, she blurted out, "Who is she?"

"A coworker," he said with a shrug. "Ella is the one traveling to Brazil with me so were just going through the itinerary."

"At seven o'clock on a Sunday?" Rose spoke with far too much bitterness in her tone than warranted.

"Our schedules are conflicting over the next few days so this was the only time we both had," Scorpius sighed, confused and yet strangely pleased with her unexpected line of questioning. "And I'm not entirely sure why I have to explain myself to you."

"You don't," she spoke stubbornly. "And yet here you are."

Here he was.

Why?

He pretended not to know the answer to that question.

"You ran off," he said.

She did.

Because he had a beautiful girl in his apartment that wasn't her.

She pretended not to care.

"You came after me," she said.

And once again the question of the day became _why_.

And once again, they ignored it.

"You're my friend," he said, perhaps emphasizing the last word a little too much. "Why wouldn't I come after you?"

Friend.

Right.

"Why don't you ever date?" she blurted out.

His eyebrow popped up. "I have you. What more could I want?"

Those words made her heart flutter.

She pretended they didn't.

"An actual girlfriend," she said with a chuckle.

He cocked his head to the side. "Are you trying to get rid of me, Rose?"

She rolled her eyes. "No."

"Because you know, you can't-"

"Get rid of you that easily," she finished with a smile. "So you've said before."

He grinned and she grinned and they both pretended it wasn't awkward.

"You came over to my place with your guitar," Scorpius changed the subject, curiosity settling into his mind. "Why?"

Ten minutes earlier, Rose had wanted to tell him everything. All about her music and her songs and the gig and the open mics and her passion for all of it.

She didn't anymore.

"Oh," she said dismissively, "I was just in the park fiddling around with my guitar, that's all."

She was lying.

He knew she was lying.

He let her.

Scorpius left for Brazil three days later and when he returned, the awkward exchange went unforgotten.

(They pretended it did anyway.)

But Scorpius knew as the days passed that the feelings were there. He knew Rose wasn't just a friend to him, that perhaps she was something more. He knew she was the one person that seemed to make everything okay, that seemed to put a smile on his face when he didn't even feel like smiling. She meant something to him. She meant everything to him.

But he suppressed it all.

Rose, on the other hand, was completely oblivious to her feelings. She wasn't ignoring them, she just didn't have the time to focus on them. She was so busy trying to balance her full-time job with her beloved hobby (perhaps, not so much just a hobby anymore) that it never occurred to her that it was her head and her heart that needed the real balancing.

The holidays were once again just around the corner and as they loomed closer, Scorpius fell more into a depressing sinkhole. His eyes turned darker with each passing day, his smile replaced with frowns, his nights fitful, and he spent his days wondering why he even bothered to go home at all, why he pretended along with the rest of his family that everything was just fine when it was far from it.

He tried swindling a trip to Mozambique over the holidays but the rest of his team shot him down. They all had families they wanted to spend the holidays with and the number one rule of the department was no one visited a foreign country alone. He wanted to hate his coworkers. But he was too busy being jealous of them.

"Come to our family's Christmas this year," Rose suggested just a few days before Christmas when she was aware how jittery the subject made him.

Scorpius let out a barking laugh. "Right, because your family would be so accepting of me there."

"_I _would," she said softly.

He grew quiet for how could he tell her that feeling like an outsider to a group of people who were wary of him and his background during the holidays wasn't any better than feeling like an outsider in his own family.

"My family wouldn't approve" is what he finally said.

"Who cares about them?" dismissed Rose. "What do _you _want to do?"

He wanted to pretend that there was no such thing as Christmas so he could avoid the holiday altogether.

Instead, he said, "I'll be fine, Rose."

She didn't believe him but he distracted her with a kiss so she didn't get to push the subject.

He worked late on Christmas Eve. Real late. The clock was inching towards midnight, the offices and the lab completely empty save for him. There was soft music playing in the background, old classic Christmas carols, and he hummed along because that seemed better than sitting in silence and letting his dark thoughts take over. His sad and lonely and pathetic dark thoughts.

He thought of Albus and Rose at the Potter household with the rest of the Weasleys and Potter clan, drinking cocoa and stuffing themselves with turkey and reminiscing on Christmases past. He could picture Rose at the piano, gathering all of the younger generation to sing sappy Christmas carols. He could see Albus trying to sneak away, pretending to be too cool for it right before singing the loudest of all. He envisioned their grandparents giving a sentimental speech and the adults dabbing at their eyes as they spoke while the younger generation acted like they were above it all even though all of them were grateful for the family they had. And he pretended that he wasn't completely envious of it all, wishing that their family was somehow his so it didn't have to hurt every time he thought of his own neglectful family.

When he heard a noise nearby, he assumed the janitorial company was there to do their daily cleaning.

So imagine his surprise when he turned around and Rose Weasley was standing there.

Not a single word came to mind as he gaped at her, his heart both confused and elated to see her even as numb as it was.

"What are you…" he choked out, unable to even speak.

She smiled at him, a smile that somehow melted everything inside of him. "I couldn't let you be alone on Christmas Eve, now could I?"

"But…" he trailed off once again, shaking his head in an attempt to compose himself. "Your family."

She shrugged. "None of them will even notice I'm gone," she chuckled. "The perks of having a large family I guess."

He looked at her with a hesitant frown. "You should get back to them," he urged because he knew how important her family was to her.

She smiled again. "You can't get rid of me that easily, Scorpius."

His heart churned and he just offered her a nod in response, still not sure what she was doing there. But he didn't ask. He realized it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that he was happy to see her.

Just when he was convinced it was better to have no heart at all, she showed up and made him think otherwise.

"Here," she said, coming around to the front of his desk and handing him a small wrapped package.

He looked down at it and then up at her. "What's that?"

She rolled her eyes. "You might not be aware of this but there's this longstanding tradition at Christmastime of giving gifts to the people you care about. You, Scorpius Malfoy, happen to be one of those people."

It wasn't meant to be sappy and yet it made his heart sore. "Someone's being cheeky tonight," he teased.

"Open it," she insisted, ignoring his quip.

He did and when he peered inside the small plastic case, he noticed what appeared to be a wizarding record. He looked at it, unlabeled, and looked up at her. "Am I daft that I'm not aware what this is supposed to mean?"

She chuckled and pulled it out of the case. "You have a record player around here somewhere?"

He got up and wandered down the hall with Rose right on his feet. Turning into one of the rookie labs, he turned on the lights and pulled out the wizarding record player from underneath one of their new hire's lab areas. Pulling it on to the table, he pushed it towards Rose. With a coy smile, she placed it on the turntable and set it to play.

A timid and yet soothing voice filled the air with familiar song lyrics.

"_Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
__Let your heart be light  
__From now on your troubles will be out of sight."_

Confusion settled in for while Rose knew it was his favorite holiday song, he couldn't figure out why she'd be giving him a disc of it. But as he listened closely, it dawned on him what this was.

Singing on that disc was noneother than Rose Weasley herself.

And it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.

Suddenly, he was frozen in time, only caring about listening to ever timbre in her voice, every word she spoke, every melody she sang. He tuned out the rest of the world, his dark thoughts and his confused heart and even Rose who stood inches away, just stood there stoically as if it was only him and the melodious song coming alive in the room.

He listened to each word, knowing that the only time his troubles were out of sight or were miles away was when he was with her. Knowing that she was more than a faithful friend, hoping the fates would allow him to be with her for always, wishing he could somehow believe that all he needed in order to have a merry little Christmas was her.

When the song ended, so, too, did his reverie and he turned towards her, the awe clearly resonating in his eyes. So many things ran through his mind from thanking her to kissing her to telling her just how much the song meant to him, to telling her just how much her showing up that night meant to him.

Instead, he said, "Play it again."

She did.

And then again, a few more times, until Scorpius reached over and kissed her, to show her all the things he couldn't say.

That was the first night that Rose Weasley thought Scorpius Malfoy might mean more to her than just a friend.

(But it would take a long time, almost too long, until she'd ever let her heart accept it.)

"You want to go somewhere with me?" Scorpius asked Rose as midnight loomed closer.

"Where?"

He gave her a curious smile before grabbing her hand and leading them through the quiet lab.

He eventually pulled her on to the roof, shivering as the cold seeped into his veins.

"Where are you taking me?" Rose asked again.

He pointed to the sky. "I come out here sometimes. Probably too often. When I'm angry or annoyed or upset or when the world finds yet another way to let me down, I come here and just look to the stars," he murmured, turning towards her with a lopsided smile. "Because looking up and knowing there's an entire world out there waiting for me is a lot better than staring at my dragging feet all day."

She stared at the boy in front of her, a simple boy living a complicated life, and felt so much hope staring back at her. Nothing in life had been easy for him, far from it, and yet he still stood there with a smile on his face and life in his eyes and she loved him for it.

She just didn't know it yet.

The next day, on Christmas morning, while Scorpius sat awkwardly in his living room chatting up his grandparents he only saw once a year, Rose was being interrogated by James.

"Where'd you go last night?"

She glanced up from her mimosa glass. "You saw that, did you?" she said with a nervous chuckle.

"You went to him, didn't you," he said with heavy disapproval.

James didn't have to say who 'him' meant. Rose already knew.

"And so what if I did?" she sighed. "We're friends and the holidays are a real rough time for him seeing as his family isn't at all close and-"

"Yeah, well they did that to themselves," James growled, chugging the rest of his champagne. "Of course they're not a happy bunch. They were on the wrong side of the war and will always have to pay for that."

Rose glared at her older cousin. "A war that was twenty-five years ago," she hissed. "Maybe they are still paying for it, maybe their reputation will never be what it once was, but why does Scorpius have to pay the price for his family's mistakes from _twenty-five years ago_?"

"He shouldn't have to," James spoke matter-of-factly. "But with the last name he carries, he always will."

Rose knew that the one thing James valued the most in the world, besides Quidditch, was his family. He had grown up as Harry Potter's eldest son and with it came a lot of unexpected prestige and there was a part of him, a large part of him, that felt compelled to carry on the honor and the legacy of the reputable reputation their family built for themselves so many years earlier. He had been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism from those who had been against the Potters, or who believed they weren't worthy of the hero title, from students to professors to spectators out in the Real World and it turned him far more cynical than any teenage boy should ever have to be. So she understood where James was coming from.

She just didn't agree with it.

But then why did she spend all of Christmas thinking about what James had said?

Rose pretended that on that fateful Christmas Eve night, nothing had changed between her and Scorpius.

Scorpius, on the other hand, knew without a shadow of a doubt that everything had.

She started to feel like some sort of addiction to Scorpius, one he didn't know how to give up, or why he even would. His thoughts were consumed of her, his dreams too. He never thought his heart could feel so much, especially for one person, and it was frightening and yet exhilarating at the same time. But he didn't dare tell her how he felt. For one, he wouldn't even know where to start. And two, he knew it didn't matter. His feelings didn't mean that something was going to change between them. He was still the guy whose parents gave him a rather crooked perspective on the very idea of lasting relationships and while he knew so much of his heart belonged to Rose Weasley, he also knew that there was a good chance the time would come where it wouldn't anymore. And he wasn't ready for that day to come.

And so they slept together when convenient, each time becoming less about relieving their stress and more about enjoying each other's company. They had their fun and when they weren't tangled in her bedsheets, they found themselves spending more and more time together in the outside world just the two of them, wandering down the Diagon Alley cobblestone street side-by-side, sharing drinks with each other at the local pub, grabbing a cup of coffee on the weekends, listening to Quidditch matches on the WWN. Things were going well for them.

Until they weren't.

It was a Sunday afternoon in May, two years after they had graduated from Hogwarts, when Albus walked in on his two best friends shagging in Scorpius' living room.

"_What the hell is going on here_?"

Scorpius and Rose scrambled off each other in horror, grasping at pillows and blankets to cover themselves as Albus stood in the hallway staring at them with a mixture of disgust and anger.

He ultimately settled on the latter.

"You little piece of shit," Albus hissed at Scorpius. "I thought I warned you to stay away from her!"

"You did _what_?" Rose shouted but she went ignored.

"It's not what you think!" Scorpius practically begged as he vigorously shook his head.

"Oh, so you _aren't _shagging my goddamned cousin!?"

He thought it was best not to answer.

It wasn't.

"Oh, you better fucking run, Malfoy, unless you want to be hexed into an oblivion!" Albus barked, practically lunging at his mate.

A guilty, and perhaps cowardly, Scorpius stumbled off the couch with a yelp and rushed towards his bedroom, slamming the door shut and locking it, leaving a very exposed Rose sitting on the couch to deal with the wrath of her cousin.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he hissed at Rose.

"Hopefully putting on clothes," she said with a sheepish chuckle.

He narrowed her eyes. "Oh, you think this is funny?"

"I think we're adults and we can do whatever the hell we want without needing your permission."

Albus shook his head with an air of defiance. "He's bad news, Rose," he practically pleaded.

"He's your best friend," Rose countered.

"Doesn't mean he's not bad news," he sighed, shaking his head at his naïve cousin. "He's a really good guy, Rose, but he has baggage. A lot of it. He doesn't know what a real relationship looks like. He'll break your heart without even realizing it."

"Good thing we're not in a relationship then," Rose said, pulling the blanket tightly around her shoulders.

Albus blinked. "What?"

She gestured towards the couch. "This is all it is, Al," she murmured. "Meaningless sex."

Albus looked skeptical. "You're playing with fire, Rose, and I promise you, you'll get burned."

"Nice metaphor," she drawled and it took everything within her not to roll her eyes. "Now any chance you could find your way out that door so I could put on some clothes?"

Albus' lips pursed, his gaze falling upon Scorpius' closed door. "I don't want to see you get hurt," he murmured almost bashfully.

Rose appreciated his touching concern but couldn't help the next words that fell from her mouth. "That's rich coming from the guy who breaks hearts on a daily basis without bothering to give a shit about anyone else's feelings except his own."

The concern in Albus' eyes turned to anger quickly and he finally did what Rose asked and stormed out.

Scorpius ventured out of his rooms moments later, fully-clothed. Meeting Rose's gaze, they just stared each other uncomfortably before he said, "Albus will get over it."

He didn't.

At work the next day, Scorpius tried to talk to Albus but he was dismissed. "I warned you to keep away from her," he seethed. "And you didn't."

Nothing more was said but as many times as Scorpius tried having a conversation with Albus was as many times as Albus made it clear that their friendship no longer existed.

Scorpius took it hard, harder than he ever really expected, for Albus was one of the few people in his life who had ever really meant something to him, who didn't care where he came from. He had been the first boy Scorpius met who smiled at him instead of sneered. He was his first friend at Hogwarts, his only one, and Scorpius had always silently appreciated him for it. Albus had never once looked at Scorpius and seen his parents or his grandparent's mistakes. He didn't see blood status. He didn't see a last name. He saw Scorpius, a sad boy who was just trying to figure out his place in the world.

But now all he saw was the guy shagging his cousin.

And slowly, over time, Scorpius came to hate Albus.

Scorpius was used to people giving up on him or never even caring in the first place. But he had never expected it from Albus.

Things might not have been worse off for Rose, but they were certainly more awkward. Albus had little trouble avoiding Scorpius. It wasn't so easy with Rose.

Just two weeks later, Rose and Albus were at the Burrow celebrating the graduation of his younger sister and her younger brother. And yet, both felt far from congratulatory.

Rose managed to corner Albus, who wanted nothing to do with her. "You don't get to be the one to hide your sick relationship with Scorpius from me and then insult my own relationship habits as if you have any clue what I deal with," he hissed. "I get to be the mad one here, not you."

"It's not a relationship," she pleaded. "Surely you of all people can understand that."

"Gee, and why should I when I apparently don't give a shit about anyone's feelings but my own?"

"Al-"

"Leave me alone, Rose," he snapped. "For good."

Rose went to Scorpius that night and when the latter opened his door, Rose only got out three words before bursting into tears.

"He hates me."

Scorpius pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly and stroking her hair and telling her that one day, everything would be okay.

Neither of them knew if that was true.

Scorpius had feared that the rocky situation with Albus would put a strain on his friendship with Rose but it didn't, it only somehow made them stronger. They leaned on each other, turned to each other in times of need, depended on each other more than they would have liked to admit because the raw truth was, they had no one else. They only had each other left.

That thought had hit Scorpius in the middle of the night only months later, as he lay in his bed staring over at the slumbering beauty beside him, her red hair sprawled out across the pillowcase and her body curled up in a tiny, vulnerable ball. He took one look at her and he knew that she was the only person left in the world that he could count on.

And that scared him.

Because that also meant there was only one person left in the world who could break him.

And if anybody could do it, it would be her.

She stirred and in doing so, noticed that Scorpius was staring at her. With a smile, she said, "Why are you looking at me like that?"

He just shook his head and said, "Thank you for being my friend."

She turned on her side and propped herself up by her elbow. "I'm not Al, Scorpius," she spoke softly. "I'm not going anywhere. You can't get rid of me that easily."

He looked at her with a nod. "Then it's a good thing I don't want to."

She smiled at him and even though her heart was breaking over her broken friendship with Albus, Scorpius somehow made everything better.

Rose was surprised how long it took her family to catch on to the mutual silent treatment between her and Albus. And she was annoyed when her father called her out on it, right in front of Scorpius.

The two of them had been wandering through Diagon Alley on a Sunday afternoon in July, just a few hours after Scorpius returned home from a three-day trip to New Zealand. He was telling Rose all about his adventures when they were interrupted.

"Ah, I thought I recognized that red hair."

When the two of them turned around, they were greeted by Rose's father, Ron Weasley, who smiled and reached over to embrace his only daughter.

The smile slowly faded when he realized the company she was with. "You replacing your cousin with the Malfoy kid, Rose?" he sighed.

Scorpius pretended not to hear the disdain in his voice as he spoke.

"What are you talking about?" Rose asked, confused.

"_Albus_," Ron sighed. "Harry mentioned to me recently that you two seem to be on the outs."

Rose frowned, searching for the right words. "There's no rule that says you have to be friends with your cousins, Dad."

Ron looked surprised by that confession. "And yet you've been friends with him for twenty years," he reminded her.

Rose turned away from the scrutiny in her father's gaze. "I guess sometimes people change."

Her father's eyes slowly traveled over to where Scorpius awkwardly stood. "And yet, sometimes they don't."

If Rose picked up on her father's not-so-subtle undertone, she didn't call him out on it. "What do you want me to say here, Dad?" she sighed. "Albus doesn't want to talk to me. But that's on him, not me. I'm perfectly fine without him."

Ron's eyes didn't stray from Scorpius. "Maybe you shouldn't be," he spoke, perhaps a little too bitterly.

Rose only rolled her eyes before saying her goodbyes.

Scorpius pretended that the whole exchange didn't bother him.

But it did.

Even though Rose accepted him for who he was, or should he say for who his family was, there was still so much of the world that didn't. Including her own family.

A songwriting competition was announced in _Witch Weekly_ early that Fall and Scorpius paraded over to Rose's apartment, knocked on her door, and handed it to her. "You're doing this."

She read the headline and looked up. "No."

He rolled his eyes. "Notice how I hadn't phrased it in the form of a question."

"Do you just casually read the _Witch Weekly_ now? That's kinda sad, Scorpius, don't you think?"

"Don't change the subject."

She frowned and looked back down at the magazine. "There will be thousands of submissions. This has failure written all over it."

It confused him how confident Rose could come off on the outside knowing that she felt the exact opposite on the inside. "How will you know if you won't try?"

She wasn't convinced but he didn't let up so a day before the deadline, she made the leap just to appease him. She recorded one of her songs and sent it to _Witch Weekly_.

And she got chosen as one of the finalists.

When she heard the finalists had to perform for the Remembralls, the band who would be recording the winning song, she had an actual panic attack. And there was only one thing she knew would be able to calm her down.

Scorpius Malfoy.

"I hate you" was how she greeted him at the door, storming past him and into his living room.

"And a Happy Monday to you, too," he said with a teasing chuckle. Shutting the door, he turned around to see Rose pacing the floor in a rather aggressive way. "You okay, Rose?"

"_No, I am not okay_," she snapped, planting her hands on her hips of a near-perfect imitation of her mother. "My stupid song got chosen as one of the finalists and now I have to go to Devonshire next weekend and perform it not only in front of an incredibly large live audience but also in front of the bloody Remembralls themselves! _What have you gotten me into_?"

Extracting actual information from her rant had his eyes widening in proud shock. "You got chosen? You're one of the finalists?"

"Did you not listen to the part where I have to perform my song _live_?" she groaned.

"So what?" he laughed. "You've performed plenty of times in front of other people."

"In front of small winery and coffee shop and pub crowds. Never thousands of people. I'm not a singer, Scorpius. I can't bloody do this!" she exclaimed, her voice now hoarse with fear. "_This is all your fault_."

"Breathe, Rose," he said, placing his hands tenderly against her shoulders, a reassuring smile resting on his face.

"I can't breathe. I'm too busy being mad at you."

The pout on her face only made his smile grow. "You have an amazing voice, Rose Weasley," he spoke. "And if you got chosen as one of the finalists, I _know _that the song you wrote must be amazing, too. Go out there and show the world just how amazing you truly are. Show them what I get to see every time I look at you."

Those words nearly made her heart stop, the intensity behind them so heartfelt and honest. They surprised her, and in a way scared her, because she only then realized just how big a part of her life he was.

In fact, he _was _her life_._

And she blamed that very thought on what she said next.

"Come with me," she blurted out.

He looked confused. "Come with you where?"

There was a long pause before Rose said, "To Devonshire."

The shock filled his eyes. "You…" he trailed off, shaking his head in disbelief, "You actually want me there when you perform?"

That even surprised her for she had always made it very clear that she preferred singing to a bunch of strangers than to the people she cared about for it was far easier handling criticism from people she didn't know than from the people she did.

But she couldn't imagine doing this without him.

"Yeah," she said softly. "I do."

November turned into December overnight and all week, Rose was a jitter of nerves. But being around Scorpius, who was only ever encouraging, helped. On the first Saturday in December, they traveled to Devonshire together. They watched the other singers, listened to their hopeful pleas, and minutes before Rose was set to go on stage, she turned to Scorpius and said, "Thank you for always being here for me."

For she was certain she never would have made it that far without him. He was her rock, her moral compass who made her feel strong when she otherwise felt weak. She never once thought she wanted him there to witness her utmost vulnerability but as she ascended the stairs to the stage and took one look back to see him smiling at her, she knew he was right where he belonged.

He had a piece of her heart.

She just didn't know it yet.

Scorpius stood off to the side as Rose introduced herself to the cheering audience and thanked them all for being there to watch as someone's dreams came true.

And as he watched her engage the crowd, he couldn't be sure who was more nervous: Rose or him.

This was the very first time he'd get to see her live and he was excited and anxious and just hoped it would be everything he imagined.

It was more.

When her voice filled the air, it was as if there was an angel standing in front of him capturing every inch of his heart. He felt the emotion in her words and he closed his eyes, tuning out the rest of the world around him.

"_I'm running through the Forbidden Forest, not sure which path to take  
__I'm screaming out for the world to hear but no one looks my way  
__The moon dims in the night, the stars misalign  
__The world is dark and so am I_

_Who am I supposed to be  
__And where am I to go  
__I'm lost in a sea of desperate dreams  
__Too afraid to hope  
__The Forest swallows me up  
__I vanish in the trees  
__I close my eyes, and take a breath  
__And listen to the breeze  
__I stop searching for an answer  
__Accept my reality  
__My inner thestrals fade away  
__I smile  
__This is me" _

The song was coming to an end and he slowly and reluctantly opened his eyes. It was in that moment as he watched her smile light up her face, her eyes so engaged, her voice so tender, as she didn't just sing the words but she meant them—_really meant them_—it was in that moment that he knew.

He was hopelessly in love with Rose Weasley.

The thought hit him hard and yet it wasn't all that unexpected. She was beautiful and kind and funny and she made him laugh in ways no one else ever had and she knew all of his secrets and didn't judge him for them and she never saw him as just another Malfoy. She looked at him and just saw Scorpius and that meant everything in the world to him.

He barely had any time to acknowledge the somersaults in his heart before Rose was flying off the stage and throwing herself into his arms, thanking him for making her do that.

With the words "_I love you_" running through his head, he only said, "I didn't do anything. That was all you."

She came in second place and while most people would have been disappointed, she wasn't. Because coming in second place out of thousands in a competition she hadn't even planned on participating in was far better than not doing it at all.

She was happy and that made him happy.

But that happiness quickly faded.

After the competition ended, she was interviewed by a few publications. And all of them seemed to only have question on their mind.

"Is that Scorpius Malfoy, son of _the_ Draco Malfoy, who accompanied you here today?"

Rose told them all that Scorpius was an old school friend and then found a quick way to change the subject.

But even though she seemed unbothered by it didn't mean that Scorpius was. Because it was clear to him that she might have been better off had he not shown up for her that day. If she was looking to make it in the music industry, to make a name for herself, the last thing she needed was to be associated with his name.

The two of them went out for a drink and celebrated before heading back to Rose's place. Rose walked inside but Scorpius remained rooted in the hallway. "I should go."

She turned around, bewildered. "You're kidding, right?"

"It's been a long day," he said with a shrug. "I'm tired."

Her browed furrowed. "Okay, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You were very quiet at the bar and now you don't want to come in for what we both know would be one hell of a booty call?" she drawled.

He wasn't sure if he was trying to put up a wall around his heart because he was afraid of what he was feeling towards her or if he was building that wall because she deserved better than to be dragged down by him. But both seemed like excellent reasons to walk away now before it became harder to let her go.

"You were wonderful today, Rose," he spoke softly. "You belong on that stage. And I think it's going to happen for you. I really do. After today, you are going to get so many people knocking on your door desperate to hear your songs. And you deserve that. You deserve to go after your dreams."

She looked at him, both flattered and bewildered. "Thank you for saying that," she said with an appreciative smile. "But what the hell does that have to do with you coming in or not?"

He sighed, glancing down the hallway as if he was looking for the easy escape. "You have a better shot at achieving those dreams without me," he murmured.

Her mouth parted. "_What_?"

Sighing again, he turned to me. "You know it's true."

"I certainly do not know that," she scoffed stubbornly. "You are aware that the only reason I was standing on that stage today was because of you, right? I can believe in my dreams because you believe in them."

"I just gave you a push," he argued. "The rest, you did on your own."

"_Scorpius_-"

"You came in second place in this amazing songwriting competition and the only thing the press seemed to care about was why you were there with me," he blurted out.

Rose blinked in surprise, it dawning on her what Scorpius was subtly insinuating. "I've been dealing with the press my whole life, Scorpius," she sighed. "They thrive on scandal. They get paid off scandal. So a Weasley coming in second place is boring and uninteresting and not really worth writing about. A Weasley coming in second place with a Malfoy standing right beside them gives them a front-page headline."

"You're kinda proving my point," he sighed.

"No, I'm not," she urged, "Because the only reason I was approached at all was because of that headline. If you weren't there, no reporter would have looked my way. My second place accomplishment wouldn't have made any publications. Or if it did, it would have bene buried in the last pages that no one ever reads. So if anything, you're actually giving me exposure. I should be thanking you."

He gaped at her. "So…now you're just using me?" he teased.

She laughed and took a step toward him. "I am saying that there are always going to be people out there who will find a reason to tear me down. Whether you're there or not. But I'm kinda hoping you'll choose the former."

She was on the path to success and she should want to do anything she could to get herself there and yet she refused to even consider the idea that it was better to do it without him. He hated her for it. But mostly he loved her for it.

So maybe she was assuaging his fears about his name associated with hers, but all that was doing was heightening his feelings for her.

Feelings that he shouldn't be feeling.

He should found another excuse to walk away, to give himself the space he needed. But he didn't. Because selfishly the only good thing he had in his otherwise strenuous life was her. And he wasn't ready to give her up.

Evidently Rose was right to say that the press only gave her exposure for she was approached by an up and coming record producer asking her if she would be interested in recording a demo of her songs after listening to a recording of her second-place song. Scorpius hoped that that meant his name hadn't completely sullied her chances of being someone.

Knowing that one day there was a good chance it would.

She spent days, weeks even, outwardly freaked out about the possibility of having an actual demo out in the world (because going after her dreams wasn't something she ever thought she'd really do).

Scorpius spent those days and weeks inwardly freaking out about falling in love with her and knowing that it could never be anything.

Falling for her had never been the plan. Falling for anyone had never been the plan. Not for him. He was damaged goods, an empty cocoon of nothing but baggage. He never believed in love. Maybe he was too afraid to believe in it or maybe it was because he had never witnessed it firsthand but it had been something so unattainable to him. Everything about him and his life was broken and disjointed. Nothing about it made any sense and it never really did.

And yet somehow she made all the sense in the world.

He didn't know what to think or even feel and he was feeling so lost and confused that he did the one thing he never should have done.

He visited his parents.

To say they were shocked when their house elf announced his presence on that Wednesday evening would have been an understatement.

His mother stared at him from the dining room table when he entered the room, her dinner going abandoned as she sputtered out, "What are you doing here, Scorpius? Is everything alright?"

He nodded and with a slight hesitation, he dropped into an empty chair at the dining room table.

"Would you like something to drink?" his father greeted. "Unless, that is, your mother already drank it all."

Astoria Greengrass glared at her husband. "Don't start, Draco."

Already, Scorpius was regretting his decision.

"It's unlike you to stop by unannounced," Draco Malfoy said to his son. Hesitating, he added, "Actually, it's unlike you to stop by at all."

Scorpius frowned, glancing back and forth between his parents, desperately looking for some sign of real love between the two.

The way his father avoided looking at his wife and the way his mother found solace in her wine glass told him that he'd be looking for a really long time.

"Why did you two get married?" he blurted out before he could even stop himself.

His parents both looked at him, alarmed and confused by the question.

"What do you mean?" his mother asked cautiously.

The fact that she had to ask that, to deflect the question, to know that she didn't have an easy answer on the tip of her tongue, made his heart sink.

And even though his parents had always pretended things were fine, Scorpius could no longer do the same.

"You two clearly don't love each other," he spoke bluntly. "So why did you ever get married in the first place?"

Avoiding real feelings, ignoring everything that had to do with the heart, was about the only thing his parents had ever been good for and he had always just followed in their footsteps.

Until now apparently.

Which justified the equally shocked and uncomfortable looks on both of his parents' faces as they avoided looking at each other by gaping at him.

"What makes you say that, Scorpius?" his mother was finally able to sputter out.

Because his father slept with every woman who wasn't his mother and his mother pretended not to know about it by drinking away her feelings.

He didn't say that.

He wanted to but he didn't.

"Besides the fact that's it's true?" he sighed.

His parents finally turned towards each other, looks of awkward resentment passing between them.

"Our marriage is complicated, Scorpius," her mother urged. "But it has nothing to do with you. Don't concern yourself with things that you don't have be concerned about."

The fact that she really believed their shamble of a marriage had nothing to do with him, that it had no effect on him and his life and his feelings, made his blood boil. But not towards her. Towards himself for ever thinking he'd be able to have a genuine conversation with them.

He stood up from the table abruptly and said, "I shouldn't have come here."

Why he ever thought he might get answers to his own confusing feelings by talking to two people who only ever suppressed theirs was a question he'd be asking himself for a very long time.

He was almost out the front door when he heard his father call out to him. Slowing his pace, he turned around to face a confused Draco Malfoy. "Why are you asking us about our marriage now, Scorpius? You've never brought it up before."

Scorpius was surprised that his father was pursuing the subject when avoiding real conversation was something he better excelled at. "Just something I've been thinking about."

He saw the skepticism in his father's eyes. "Is it because of the _Weasley_ girl?" he said, spitting out her surname like it was some sort of disease.

Yes, but he wasn't about to tell his father that. "Why do you say her name like that?" he seethed.

"Oh, don't act naïve, son," Draco sighed. "Don't pretend not to know the social hierarchy in this world. The Weasleys and the Potters are at the top of the food chain and we're at the bottom. And no amount of _friendship_ is ever going to change that. I trust you know that."

Scorpius hated everything his father said. Not just because he was being tactless crass, which he was, but because he was also right. "Oh, is this you suddenly caring about me and my life?" he retaliated bitterly.

Shock shone in his father's eyes. "I care," he huffed. "I'm your father. Of course I care about you."

Scorpius should have dropped the subject.

He didn't.

"And what about your daughter? Do you care about her, too?"

The look on his father's face was one that Scorpius would never forget, a mixture of horror and betrayal staring back at him with wide eyes and a parted mouth.

What Scorpius didn't see was any form of guilt.

"How do you…" his father trailed off, unable to get the words out. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Wrong answer, Dad," he hissed, turning his back on his father and storming out.

His father quickly chased after him, his usual composure filled with a frantic panic. "That situation isn't something you could possibly understand, son," he spoke pleadingly.

"Because you've kept it from me!" Scorpius practically screamed. "That's all you ever do. That's all anyone in this family ever does. Keep everything hidden, bury the past, pretend we're normal. Do you think burying the shameful Malfoy secrets is going to change the fact that those secrets exist? It doesn't. It just makes you cowards."

His father struggled to find the right words to say. "Our past discretions, our reputation, the Malfoy name, these are things that are beyond your control, _beyond your understanding_, nor would I want you to understand them," he said and his voice was unexpectedly steady. "They are in the past, far before your time. And it's best that they stay there."

"I bear that Malfoy name, Dad," Scorpius said and he felt whatever strength he had inside of him slowly deteriorate. "It's not in the past. It's still very much in the present and I still very much get judged for it. And if you think hiding some illegitimate child somehow keeps the Malfoy name noble, you're wrong. Because we've never been noble and I'm certain we never will be."

He managed to escape that time, the thoughts in his head and the feeling in his heart suddenly so much darker than he ever thought they could be.

That night when Rose walked into his apartment to see him sitting alone in the dark with a drink in hand and her version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on loop, she knew something was wrong.

"How many times have you listened to this?" she asked when the song ended and it automatically replayed.

He only shrugged.

She flipped on a lamp and took a seat beside him. "What's wrong, Scorpius?" she whispered.

His heart began to ache at the loaded question and to quiet the pain, he closed his eyes and just listened to her lyrics.

"_Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
Make the Yuletide gay  
From now on your troubles will be miles away_

_Here we are as in olden days  
Happy golden days of yore  
Faithful friends who are dear to us  
Gather near to us once more."_

He felt her body curl up beside his and her head rest against his shoulder and there was something so magical about the simple gesture, so much that it almost made him believe that love really could conquer all.

Or maybe it would only just conquer them.

"I hate them," he blurted out, his eyes fluttering open and meeting the concern of hers.

"Hate who?" she whispered.

It took him a long time to answer. "My parents."

She drew in a sharp intake of breath. "Did something happen?"

"Yeah," he muttered, staring down the barrel of his firewhisky glass. "They screwed me up for life."

The pain in his voice, unmasked and exposed, was something that nearly brought tears to Rose's eyes, to know he dealt with such neglect and carelessness from his own family. And she wished she could say she understood but she didn't. His family was so vastly different than hers and she could be there for him and comfort him and tell him he mattered to her but that wouldn't change the hole in his heart that was caused by his family.

"No, they didn't," she spoke softly, shaking her head at him. "I know they're not the perfect parents, far from it, and I know you've dealt with a lot when it comes to them but you aren't screwed up. You are a funny, charming, ambitious man, not to mention sexy, and the best friend that a girl could ever ask for. So who needs them? You have me. You will always have me."

He squeezed his eyes shut, listening to the sincerity in her words, the desperation in her voice. His heart suddenly felt lighter, something he didn't even believe was possible. Something about that moment felt so real, as if this was the life he was destined to live, not the invisible one he always thought he'd be forced to live. But while he may have been invisible to everyone else, he knew he wasn't invisible to her.

And that was the only thing that mattered to him.

She nudged him with her shoulder and he opened his eyes, turning to her with his own desperation. "You can't get rid of me that easily, Scorp," she whispered. "_You can't get rid of me ever_."

He had gone to his parents as a way of trying to understand what love even meant.

But looking at her, he decided that he didn't need to understand.

He just needed her.

So he kissed her because he couldn't tell her how much he needed her, couldn't tell her how much she enriched his life, couldn't tell her that she had somehow changed his life for the better when he never thought it possible.

And she kissed him back, knowing that she had meant every word she spoke.

When they pulled apart, Rose climbed off the floor and stretched out her hand to him. "Come on."

He looked up at her, bewildered. "Come on where?"

"Get up and I'll show you," she chuckled.

He looked skeptical but she had never led him astray before so he grabbed her hand and let her pull him to his feet.

"Grab the blanket," she demanded and he looked at her inquisitively before obliging.

She strode over to his balcony and slid open the door, letting out a tiny squeak as the December cold hit them with an unexpected jolt.

"I see why we need the blanket," he joked as she directed them to the small bench he had set up on the balcony.

Pulling her down beside him, she grabbed the blanket and threw it across their laps. "Now," she spoke softly, pointing to the sky, "Look to the stars."

He gaped at her, suddenly reminded of one year earlier on Christmas Eve when he told her that he looked to the stars every time the world let him down. He did it more often than he ever would have liked to admit but he hadn't expected her to remember such a trivial moment in time. And yet she did.

He loved her more then than ever before.

"I said look to the stars," Rose chuckled, pointing to the sky. "Not at me."

But the truth was, the very obvious truth that was now staring him in the face, was that he didn't have to look to the stars to feel whole again anymore. He had her to do that for him.

He didn't tell her that. He couldn't tell her that. He didn't even really know what any of it meant. So he loved her from afar, knowing that that was all he could do. His heart was too damaged to give to another person, not even to the girl that already owned a piece of it. He wasn't worthy of her, never really was, and she deserved far better than he had ever been or will ever be. He was a Malfoy and she was a Weasley and while he liked to believe that didn't matter, it did. So he told himself he was okay watching her from the sidelines, being her friend and confidante. He told himself she was in a different place than him, letting her pursuit of a music career take control of her life. He took a backseat and that was okay for she was finally going after all the things she had pretended she never wanted, all the things that had always made her happy, and that is all he had ever wanted for her. He didn't know if he could make her happy the way she deserved. So it was best that he didn't even try.

Maybe one day he'd tell her. When the timing was right. When she finally accomplished her dreams. When she was happy with her life. And when he was happy with his. One day.

That day came a lot quicker than he had ever expected.

It was the week before Christmas and James Potter had just been announced as one of the starting chasers to the following year's Quidditch World Cup so he decided that the only way to celebrate was to throw a raucous party in his Kensington penthouse suite that very night. The apartment was crammed full of people all taking shots and cheering for the great James Potter when Rose finally noticed a timid Scorpius slipping through the front door.

She was definitely already slightly buzzed off the endless supply of firewhisky when she rushed over to him. "About time. I was beginning to think you wouldn't show up."

Scorpius glanced around the room at her family and their friends. "I don't know if you know this but your cousin doesn't like me very much."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, who cares about him?"

Scorpius decided not to tell her that he did a little bit. Instead, he found himself distracted by the dress Rose Weasley was wearing, a slinky black dress that hugged her every curve.

Rose noticed Scorpius eying her up and smirked. "Whatcha staring at?" she teased, offering him a sip of her half-full glass of firewhisky.

He took the drink and gulped down a mouthful before hanging it back to her. "I'm trying to recall when I've ever seen you in a dress, Weasley."

She rolled her eyes. "Blame Lily. She refused to let me out the door in my usual jeans and a T-shirt."

He shrugged, his eyes once again taking in her every curve. "That dress leaves very little to the imagination."

She smirked and leaned in, "Now why would you have to resort to your imagination? You've seen it all, remember?"

Maybe it was the sleek dress or the faint detection of lip gloss or the randy look in her eyes or maybe it had been four whole days since he had last ravished her but whatever the reason was had him grabbing her hand and pulling her into the hallway. When the door shut behind them, he practically shoved her up against the wall and pressed his lips to hers without another word.

Their lips swirled in a frenzied manner and Scorpius let out a small moan when he felt Rose unconsciously pressing her pelvis up against him. "Screw this party," he whispered huskily. "Let's get out of here."

Rose chuckled as their lips met again and perhaps if she hadn't done that, perhaps if they had just walked towards the elevator at that time and apparated back to her place, they wouldn't have been caught.

But she did kiss him and froze moments later when she heard a throat clear next to them.

The two of them sprang apart and jerked their heads towards the quiet sound to find James Potter standing there with crossed arms.

"Something you need to tell us, Rosie?" he spoke dryly.

"No," she pleaded, shaking her head almost vigorously. "This isn't what it looks like."

"It looks like you're snogging a Malfoy."

The indefinite article before his name did not go unnoticed by him.

It did however go unnoticed by Rose who shrugged and said, "Okay, so it is what it looks like."

"Do we need to find you a psychiatrist to examine that head of yours? Because I'm thinking it's not screwed on to your neck very straight if you think snogging a Malfoy is in any way a wise idea."

There was that little 'a' before his surname again. Scorpius shouldn't have been bothered by it. He had gone his whole life being judged for his surname, for people thinking he was as callous as his father and as cruel as his grandfather. He didn't even blame the world for he, too, didn't think very highly of his family. What he did blame the world for was the many people who never tried to see him for him and only saw him for his name.

James Potter was one of those people.

"So? It's not as if your choices in snogging partners are always so respectable," Rose scoffed.

What she didn't realize, what Scorpius did, was that she just told James in a roundabout way that snogging Scorpius wasn't respectable.

"We're not talking about me," James dismissed. "This has disaster written all over it. Can you imagine what your father would think if he found out about this?"

"And how would he find out about it?" Rose hissed with an incredible amount of intimidation in her eyes.

"Oh, not from me," James quickly said, shaking his head. "I don't plan on telling anyone about this, Rosie. This family deals with enough shit without throwing this scandal into the mix. And a scandal is exactly what this is, in case you're wondering."

"Oh, stop being such a Drama Queen," she snapped at him.

"I'm not and you know it," he hissed. "Why do you think you've been hiding it? Because you know exactly how this would look to the outside world. You are going to be eaten alive by the press, Rose. And so, too, will the rest of our family because that's just what the press does. So here's a not so friendly piece of advice: end it before dishonor is brought to our family's name."

He rushed back into his apartment and Rose said nothing more to him, too busy fuming to say anything.

And Scorpius just stood there suddenly wishing he had never kissed Rose Weasley.

Ever.

Because the unfortunate thing was, James was right.

And there wasn't anything Scorpius could do to change that.

"Ignore him," Rose murmured. "Most people do."

Scorpius looked at her wordlessly before taking off down the hallway towards the elevator.

"What—_where are you going_?" Rose called after him, confused.

He said nothing as he repeatedly pressed the down button on the elevator, willing for it to show up before Rose could catch up with him.

Luck was not on his side.

"I said ignore _him_," Rose drawled. "Not me."

Scorpius stared at the elevator doors, refusing to look at the redhead now standing directly on his right.

"Are you mad he found out?" she asked, still confused. "He won't tell anyone. He meant it when he said-"

"Yeah and you'd just love that, wouldn't you?" Scorpius spoke for the first time. His frustration at James, and the rest of the world, was boiling over and he was targeting it at the only person that didn't deserve it. But he couldn't help himself. "Keeping this a secret from the world. Because God forbid anyone find out that the innocent, virtuous, uncorrupted saint of a Weasley got herself involved with the devil."

Her mouth dropped and she was struggling to find the words to respond when the elevator dinged and the doors opened. Scorpius stepped on and she hastily followed, much to his chagrin. As the doors began to close, Scorpius stopped them and gestured down the hall. "Go back to the party, Weasley. Go bring _honor _to your family's name."

"I don't care what your last name is," Rose huffed, ignoring him. "I've never cared about that. You're my best friend, Scorpius. Don't you think if I gave a shit what your last name was, you wouldn't be?"

"You forget, we're a little more than just _friends_," he spoke coolly.

The elevator began to screech at them so Scorpius drew his hand back and the elevator doors closed. Neither pressed the lobby button, too busy glaring at each other to do anything else.

"And what difference does that make?" she asked, confused. "It's not like it means anything. We're just having fun. All we are _is _friends, Scorpius. So why the hell are you mad at me for something that isn't even bloody relevant?"

"Because maybe this isn't just for fun to me anymore!" he blurted out before he could stop himself.

And then he so wished he had.

The surprise and the horror on Rose's face did not go unnoticed. "What…" she trailed off. Blinking, she dared to continue. "What do you mean this isn't just for fun anymore?"

Scorpius looked at her, not even sure what to say or do, knowing he was exposing himself to a world of trouble if he told her the truth.

He glanced over at the elevator panel and pressed the PH button. The elevator doors slowly opened and he climbed off the elevator, not even sure what he was doing or where he was going. He just knew he needed to get away from her before he said something that would ruin them forever.

"Where the hell are you going?" Rose urged, holding up the door as she glared at his retreating back. "You don't get to say something like that and then just walk away!"

He stopped and slowly turned around. "I don't want to say something I'll later regret," he pleaded.

She frowned. "Like what?"

The elevator began to screech again and Rose slammed her palm against the door, annoyed, before sliding out.

Scorpius watched the doors close behind her, his only real means of escape now gone.

"_Scorpius_," she snapped impatiently. "What aren't you telling me?"

He tore his gaze off of the elevator doors to look at her. "You aren't just my best friend, Rose, you're my only friend," he choked out, the words hoarse against his tongue. "The person I turn to for everything. I need you in my life more than I've ever needed anyone. And that scares me because I always thought the only person I could ever really depend on was myself. But then you became a part of me, so unexpectedly and yet so effortlessly. You changed my life. You changed the way I saw things. The way I felt things. You changed me for the better. I can't imagine my life without you. And I don't want to."

She gaped at him, his words so touching and yet chilling at the same time for there was something in the way he spoke and the way he was looking at her that made her feel as if there was something more he wasn't saying. That perhaps there was something more than just friendship he felt between them.

Only, there wasn't.

(Right?)

"You don't have to imagine it without me," she whispered, her voice trembling with caution. "I'm always going to be here for you. I'm always going to be your best friend. You can't get rid of me that easily, remember?"

She emphasized the words 'best friend' and Scorpius knew that was intentional, as if to tell him to tread carefully.

He didn't.

"But that's just it, Rose. You aren't just my best friend," he said, his words almost desperate as he took a hesitant step towards her. "You're the girl I'm madly in love with."

The breath that Rose didn't realize she was holding exhaled in the form of a quiet gasp, her heart suddenly feeling heavier than it ever had before.

"You don't mean that," she pleaded, practically begging him to take it back.

Those words were like a knife to the heart.

He had expected them. But that didn't mean they didn't hurt.

"I do," he murmured. "I don't know when it happened or even how but it did."

"But…" she sputtered, vehemently shaking her head, "That wasn't the arrangement!"

He said nothing at first, knowing that however he chose to continue this conversation would set himself up for failure. "The arrangement changed."

"For _you _maybe," she blurted out.

That was all she said but it was enough.

"Even if it did change for you, you'd never admit it," Scorpius said, almost sadly, as he tried to walk past her and head to the elevator once again, needing to be anywhere else but in that hallway.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she demanded, grabbing his arm before he could walk away.

He turned to her and saw the panic in her eyes, saw the horrified look in her dazed expression, and he knew there was no turning back now. "It means that the only thing you've ever really been good at was running from change, Rose," he spoke bluntly. "You're so afraid to be something, be _someone_, that you'd rather be nothing. You won't let yourself see past our arrangement because you don't want to. Not because you can't."

He saw the wall going up before he even finished his proclamation.

"You don't know what you're talking about," she hissed in her usual defensive manner.

He noticed the denial in her eyes and the stubbornness in her expression and he knew he was losing her.

Or maybe he never really had her to begin with.

"I do," he murmured regretfully. "I see all the things inside of you that you are too afraid to see in yourself. And you know why? _Because I love you_. I love everything about you, even your flaws."

"You don't love me," she pleaded, shaking her head at him. "You…you can't love me."

"Why?" he challenged. "Why can't I-"

"Because you can't!" she cried out. "Because it doesn't make sense. Because it could never work. Because I don't love you. Because I can't love you. Because you're…"

Her words should have hurt him, should have burrowed a hole in his heart, but instead of hearing what she said, he heard what she wasn't saying. "Because I'm a Malfoy and you're a Weasley?" he choked out, those eight words finding a way to shatter whatever small piece of his fragile heart was left.

Surprise flickered in her eyes. "That's not what I said," she whispered.

His heart felt empty and his limbs numb with the realization, a realization he really wished he had come to before, that he had been right all of those years never to believe in the power of love. There was no power in love. There was only failure.

"But I think it's what you meant," he whispered hoarsely, "Even if you're only now just realizing it."

She opened her mouth to argue, to tell him he was wrong, but the words wouldn't form because even though she cared about him more than she'd ever be willing to admit, he'd always live in a different world than her. And in that world, he could love her but she didn't know how to love him.

And she was too afraid to try.

"This doesn't have anything to do with our names," she spoke desperately. "I wouldn't be friends with you if it did."

There was that word again. Friend. Maybe she was convinced they could still go back but Scorpius knew they couldn't.

Scorpius knew that Rose didn't care about his last name. That him being a Malfoy meant quite literally nothing to her. But he still wasn't the guy she had ever pictured herself ending up with. James wasn't the only member of her family who thought he could do nothing but bring dishonor to the Weasley and the Potter name and Rose would always choose them over him. Not because she necessarily wanted to but because she had to.

"But," he whispered softly, "You won't be something more than my friend because of it."

Once again, she grew silent as she attempted to collect her thoughts. She knew she was floundering in a sea of confusion, her words and thoughts a jumbled mess of unexpected chaos. She wasn't explaining herself well, her head causing conflict with her heart where neither of them were saying what they wanted to say. She wasn't sure what she was feeling but she knew what she wasn't feeling and that was love. And all she wanted to do was go back in time to before James found out about them, to before this conversation, to when everything was okay between them.

Because it was clear now that everything wasn't.

"You can't make me feel something that I don't, Scorpius," she pleaded, begging him to take back what he said.

He met the desperation in her gaze. "And you can't make me not feel something that I do."

That was quite literally the opposite thing she would have liked for him to say.

She was all out of words, out of excuses, out of pleas. All she could say, in the most hesitant of ways, was "Scorpius…"

That was it. Just one word. Three syllables. His name rolling off her tongue.

If ever there was a time for her to fight for him, for them, that would have been it.

But she didn't.

And he couldn't pretend that didn't hurt.

"James was right," he spoke softly. "You and me? We will always be two very different people who came from two very different families living in two very different worlds. So go back to the party, Rose, because that's where you belong," he pleaded, gesturing towards the door at the end of the hallway. With an overwhelming ache in his heart, he added, "I don't. I never have. And I never will."

He swiftly turned around and pressed the down button, staring at the elevator doors and praying they'd open up and swallow him whole.

"Forget our families," she spoke from behind him, her voice desperate with guilt. "This isn't about them, Scorpius, it's about us."

He squeezes his eyes shut, taking a deep breath in and slowly breathing out, before saying, "There is no us, Rose. There's a you and there's a me and there's a line between us that can never be crossed."

He jabbed at the down button again, feeling the sadness in his heart slowly forming unexpected tears in the side of his eyes.

She refused to believe him. "Why does it have to be all or nothing?" she called after him. "Why can't we just go back to the way things used to be?"

"Because," he whispered at the elevator doors in front of him, refusing to turn around and look her in the eyes, too afraid that he would lose the courage to walk away if he did, "I love you and you can't love me back. I can't just ignore that. And I know you can't either."

The elevator doors opened and Rose felt her heart tremble with panic.

"_Don't get on that elevator_, _Scorpius,_" she begged, her tone blanketed with an incredible amount of desperation, knowing that once those elevator doors came to a close, so too would their friendship. "Can't we please just talk about this?"

There was a brief moment, barely a millisecond, that Scorpius wondered if they could.

Only he knew in his heart they couldn't.

So he stepped on to the elevator.

When he turned around, he saw the look of shock and betrayal on her face and before she could say anything, he spoke. "There's nothing left to talk about," he whispered, his words barely audible. "You deserve great things, Rose Weasley. And the very heartbreaking and unfortunate truth is, that's not me. So go be great. Me? I'll just go be a Malfoy."

And before either one of them could say another word, the doors closed, shutting them out and leaving the two of them on opposite sides.

Much like the world they lived in.

* * *

**A/N: **Yep, another Rose and Scorpius story. I started this a few years back and picked it back up again because I wanted to write a post-Hogwarts story. It will only be a few chapters, maybe 3-5. Let me know what you think.


	2. How It All Fell Apart

**A/N: **Originally, this was going to be a one-shot that ended where it ended yesterday. But I couldn't do it. I wanted more information, more answers, more Rose and Scorpius. So here we are with chapter 2 and yes, there will be more.

* * *

**LOOK TO THE STARS**

By ByeByeBirdie

Chapter 2: How It All Fell Apart

* * *

Scorpius' coworker, Ella, came to him three days before Christmas and asked him if he was looking to get out of the country for the holidays.

Scorpius didn't tell her that he was looking to get out of the country forever.

Instead he said, "Where are we going?"

The answer was Panama.

Scorpius had never gone fishing a day in the life and yet there he was on a fishing vessel harpooning isthmian goby, a rare Potions ingredient, in the Panama Bay for seven days with only Ella, a ship captain, and a handful of deckhands to keep him company. He welcomed the solitude. It was a perfect way to live in self-pity.

On day six, Ella knocked on his cabin door and handed him a beer. He took it and welcomed her into the rather cramped hole in the wall. She looked at him and said, "What's with you?"

He could have pretended not to know what she was talking about but he had been quiet and bad-tempered all week.

Taking a sip of the beer, he said, "Rose and I are over."

"I thought you weren't together."

"Whatever the hell we were," he said, raising his voice in irritation, "It's over."

She threw back a sip of her own beer before saying, "I'm single now, too."

He looked at her in surprise.

"Why do you think I wanted to get out of England for the holidays?" she muttered.

He never even considered that. He was too busy living in his own pathetic world to bother thinking about anyone else.

"Oh," he said, cringing. "I'm sorry."

She shrugged. "Whatever. I'm fine."

She wasn't.

And since neither was he, he kissed her.

And she didn't say no.

Later, after they shagged and she left, Scorpius finished off his beer and stared up at the top of his bunk. It only took seconds before he felt the tears collecting in the back of his eyes.

It's not that the sex with Ella was bad.

It's just that she wasn't Rose.

Neither of them spoke of that night again.

They returned to England on the morning on December 31st and Scorpius rang in the New Year alone.

Rose rang it in surrounded by her cousins.

She would have preferred it alone.

She tossed and turned at night, _every night_, for hours, wondering why things were left the way they were between her and Scorpius, wondering why it had to end the way it did. She had tried going over to Scorpius' place a handful of times, to try and go back to the way things used to be, but every time she lifted her hand to knock on his door, she couldn't do it. She didn't know how to face him knowing he had fallen for her and she didn't feel the same. How could she be around him knowing things were different now? Knowing they would never be the same again?

She asked herself why he walked away, right before asking herself why she let him. Was he right? Were their names keeping them apart? Or was it something more? Was she scared of his confession of love or just confused? Was it easier watching him walk away than it was trying to preserve a friendship that apparently was no longer just a friendship?

The answers were almost as unclear as the questions.

When she wasn't busy replaying their last moments together, she was replaying their entire friendship in her head, trying to come up with some sort of clue as to when things changed for them. Trying to pinpoint some sort of date and time when love became a factor. She analyzed every moment with him, every laugh and smile they had together, every night they were in her bed, all the secrets they told each other, all the kisses they shared. She went over every minute she could, trying to decipher the exact moment in time where their arrangement went from something casual to something meaningful.

No answer came to her.

Not because she couldn't pinpoint a time.

But because there were too many to choose from.

(But try telling her heart that.)

She had never felt such raw pain before in the days after Scorpius walked away from her. It hurt being in her apartment, his presence everywhere from the kitchen to the bedroom to the living room to the shower. But it somehow hurt more being out in the Real World. The romantic Christmas lights seemed to mock her. The smiling couples snuggling up against each other hurt her heart. The Christmas music, what she once craved during the holiday season, was too painful to hear. He was everywhere and her heart couldn't bear it. She spent so much time crying over him. Too much.

So, as Rose sat out on James' balcony on New Year's Eve ignoring the countdown to midnight just inside the French doors, she made a New Year's resolution to put Scorpius in her past and focus on her future.

And so she threw herself into the only thing she had left: her music.

Scorpius threw himself into whatever country would take him.

He traveled more than ever, always volunteering for any mission that came up. He was in Cambodia for four days and then Australia for six and then Madagascar for five. He was on the road more than he was at home, feeling a desperate need to just get away from whatever life he had left in England. Every time he stood in his living room, he saw Rose sitting on the couch tossing popcorn into his mouth. When he was in his kitchen, he felt her hanging out at the round table with her peppermint tea. When he was in the shower, he thought of her naked body pressed up against the glass. And he could barely look at his bed without thinking of her warm body snuggled up against him.

It was the quiet moments he missed the most, the times where they laughed about nothing in particular or just chatted about nothing important, simply enjoying each other's company in a single moment while the world moved around them.

He pretended not to miss those moments.

But even he knew he was lying.

It was late at night when he returned home from his latest mission to Morocco, a few days before the month of March. He was coming off the elevator when he ran into Albus returning to his own apartment. They both stared at each other, the awkward tension thicker than ever, before Scorpius tore his eyes off of his ex-friend and made his way towards his own apartment.

"Rumor in the family is you and Rose don't speak to each other anymore."

Even the mere mention of her sent a flutter to Scorpius' heart.

He froze halfway down the hallway but didn't turn around. "Why do you care?"

He didn't have to be facing Albus to know he shrugged. "I don't."

The hesitation in Albus' tone told Scorpius he did. But he said nothing as he continued on down the hallway.

"I knew this would happen," Albus spoke, his voice raising just slightly. "I knew you would find a way to break her heart."

Only then did Scorpius turn around with a sad glare etched into his expression. "You've got it all wrong," he hissed. "She was the one who broke mine."

Albus looked torn between wanting to know how and not wanting to talk about it at all.

He eventually went with the former. "And how did she do that?"

Scorpius shook his head swiftly. "I don't want to talk about it," he snapped. "Especially with you."

Turning on his heel, he stormed off towards his own apartment.

"You're seriously walking away right now?" Albus scoffed.

"I'm only doing what you did first," Scorpius snapped over his shoulder as he pulled out his apartment key and stuck it into the door.

"Because you were sleeping with my cousin when I told you not to!" Albus exploded.

"_And so what_?" Scorpius shouted at him, the fury burying a whole in his heart. "What we were doing didn't concern you."

"You were my best friends. Of course it concerned me!"

"Best friends?" Scorpius laughed cynically, shaking his head at him. "Is that what you think we were? You turned your back on me the first chance you could. You walked away from our friendship because your ego was a little bruised, because you hated knowing that your two friends had a life together that didn't include you. You stopped caring about me the moment you found out that I had someone else to care about. So don't you dare tell me we were best friends. We weren't. We were never anything. I wish I had never met you, Albus."

And with that, Scorpius slammed the door in Albus' stunned face and locked it behind him.

The last thing Scorpius had the energy to deal with was the cousin of the girl he fell in love with defending her and criticizing him.

He wasn't the one who should be criticized. He didn't do anything wrong.

Except perhaps fall in love with a girl who was all wrong for him.

That night, he finished off a near-empty bottle of firewhisky while he sat on his balcony staring up at the stars.

Once upon a time, looking up at the stars calmed him down.

Now, it only reminded him of Rose.

He tried not to think about her, forced himself to spend all of his time on his work, but she still crept into his mind every now and then. Nights were the worst when he was alone with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company, thoughts that were almost always consumed by Rose. It hurt to think about her and yet it hurt not to, the memories of their times together something he was too afraid to lose. He had been the best version of himself with her and now that she wasn't a part of his life, he was afraid of who he might become.

In an ironic twist of fate, Rose had the exact same fear. He had always seen her in her best light, even when she wasn't feeling her best. He believed in her hopes and dreams more than she ever did. He believed in her. And without him there telling her she deserved to shoot for the stars, to go after all the things that meant the most to her, she was afraid she'd not only lose him but lose the only other thing in her life that had ever made her happy.

She spent the new few months in the recording studio recording her very first demo. She sang her songs like she always had before, only for the first time ever she wasn't feeling them. She felt like a robot reading a page of words in front of her but never understanding the true meaning behind them.

The producer, a tall man who always wore a beret by the name of Philippe Tussaud, told her once, when they both knew she wasn't feeling it, "Sing from the heart."

It was the single most scariest piece of advice anyone had ever given her.

She was afraid to listen to her heart, to hear what it might be saying. She was afraid her heart had grown fragile in just the past few months, ready to break. She was afraid of being vulnerable, afraid of feeling things she wasn't prepared to feel. She was afraid of feeling anything at all.

But what she had been too afraid to feel, she put into words. She put pen to paper and filled an entire notebook of song after song, the next somehow better than the one before it. It didn't make her feel better but it did make her feel human. Grief and sorrow were a part of life and while she hadn't dealt with much of it before, she felt it all over now.

And she took it with her into that recording studio. Suddenly, her songs didn't sound flat. They didn't sound robotic. They didn't sound fake. And when she sang her very last song on the ten-song album, when she sang it from deep within her broken heart, when she sang what she was too afraid to feel, she felt the unexpected tears attacking the side of her eyes as thoughts of Scorpius filled her mind and rendered her emotionally hopeless.

When she looked up, she saw the entire studio staring at her in awe.

"What?" she croaked out, inconspicuously swiping at her eyes.

Philippe just grinned and said, "You're going to be a star, Rose Weasley."

Those words should have made her heart soar.

But all she felt was nothing.

She had found a way to sing from the heart and now it was empty. Not because she had no feelings but because she wondered in that moment if she had given her heart away a long time ago. And she wondered if she's ever really get it back.

"That was incredible."

Rose looked up from the water she was drowning her sorrows in to meet a pair of deep violet eyes. "Thanks," she said flatly, taking another sip of the bottled water.

He cocked his head to the side. "You don't think so?"

"I didn't say that."

"You don't sound very enthusiastic for someone who just finished such a beautiful and soulful album."

So apparently she didn't just put her heart into it (or what was left of it anyway), she also put in her soul.

"It's just been a long few months," she spoke vaguely, lifting herself out of the chair with a nod in his direction before taking off towards the exit.

"And now the long months are over," he called after her. "Go out and celebrate, Rose Weasley. You deserve it."

She less than celebratory at the moment.

Turning back to him, she frowned curiously and said, "How do you know my name?"

His eyebrow shot up. "No offense, but your name isn't exactly unknown in the wizarding world."

She sighed. "Oh, right."

"Besides, I've been watching you record for months now. Should I feel offended you haven't noticed me at all?" he chuckled.

She didn't notice much of anything these days.

"Guess I've just been busy focusing on my songs," she said with only the slightest hint of guilt in her tone.

"As you should. They're very moving. You have some serious songwriting skills, Rose."

She felt herself blush at the unexpected comment. "Thanks," she said with a nod. Pausing, she added, "So you may know my name but I don't know yours."

He grinned and extended his hand towards her. "Chad Bennington. It's nice to-"

"_The _Chad Bennington?" Rose interrupted, in shock.

He shrugged. "That depends. What Chad Bennington are you referring to?"

"You're all over the radio right now," she said. "The new young talent taking over the wizarding world's music industry and _Witch Weekly's _gossip pages. I didn't know you recorded with Quaffle Records."

"Ah, that Chad Bennington," he chuckled sheepishly. "Yeah, that would be me."

Rose gaped at him. "Chad Bennington just complimented my songs," she spoke in awe, suddenly pulled away from the cloud of heartbreak hanging over her head to turn into a rather pathetic fangirl. "Any chance I could get that in writing?"

"I'll do you one even better," he said, rolling up his sleeves with a hopeful smile. "What do you say we record a song together?"

She was certain her heart stopped. She opened her mouth but evidently simple motor skills had completely escaped her.

"Is that a yes?" he chuckled.

"You…" she trailed off, shaking her head in utter disbelief. "Am I dreaming right now?"

"No, but I could pinch you if that would help convince you," he smirked.

She just shook her head. "Yes, please—no, I mean, don't pinch me. I'm not saying yes to that, I'm saying yes to the song. The recording of the song. Oh, bugger, I'm totally babbling right now."

He just laughed. "Don't worry, I'm finding it somewhat endearing."

"Oh, good, because I'm just finding it totally embarrassing."

Rose spent the next few months traveling the country doing press for her album scheduled to be released at the end of August. She quit her job, to the surprise of no one, and focused every bit of her time and energy on her music. She focused on her music so as not to focus on what she refused to focus on, the one person she so desperately did not want to focus on.

Writing songs consumed her, the words somehow flowing off the page more than they ever had before, and when she wasn't promoting her new album, she was collaborating on a new song with Chad.

It was a humid day in July as the two of them lounged in a nearby park, swapping song lyrics. Rose had never once considered sharing her unfinished songs with anyone and yet she found herself welcoming Chad's opinion, who was becoming a more world-renowned musician with every day that passed.

"These lyrics are so intense and emotional, Rose," he commented and then added offhandedly, "I'm sorry you had to go through a tough breakup to get to them."

Those words startled her for it had been nearly an hour since she had last thought of Scorpius.

Swiftly shaking her head, she said, "No, no breakup. I've never really dated anyone. Haven't had the time. These just came from the heart, that's all."

He looked down at her notebook, flipping back the pages and rereading some of what she wrote. "Yeah," he mused. "A broken heart."

She shook her head again, this time more vigorously than before. "My heart's fine," she practically pleaded.

He looked up at her, sensing the unexpected desperation. "The lyrics in your older notebooks are all about finding your place in the world and feeling scared of having a dream and feeling vulnerable and invisible. But this new notebook? The songs are all about love and heartbreak. Something had to have happened. Something had to have changed."

Bewilderment settled into the back of her head as she practically grabbed her latest notebook out of his hands, flipping through the pages and rereading her own words.

And she came to the same conclusion that he did.

That perhaps Scorpius meant a whole lot more to her than even she realized.

She felt stunned and confused and hesitant, wondering how such an obvious change in her hadn't been obvious to her at all. Her head suddenly felt clouded, a world of emotions bubbling up from within that only sent more ache to her already fragile heart. Can losing a friend really cause the same amount of heartbreak one might feel from losing a loved one? How could he still have so much of a hold on her even months after they separated? How could she _let_ him have so much of a hold on her?

"I'm sorry," she heard Chad say opposite her, though he suddenly felt so far away. "I didn't mean to bring up any bad memories or anything."

"You didn't," she lied in a hoarse murmured, swiftly shutting the notebook and pushing it aside. "He…he wasn't anyone special."

Chad hesitated before saying, "I think he was."

She shook her head again but said nothing, not even sure what she could say. Not even sure what she was feeling.

Chad picked up her notebook and handed it back to her. "Write about it."

And so she did.

The two of them recorded that song just a few weeks later.

Scorpius heard it for the first time when he was across the Atlantic Ocean in New York.

It was a warm October day and he sat in a known wizarding pub munching on pretzels and drinking a beer while chatting with Ella about a new job prospect when he heard hername come over the radio.

"_And next we've got the new single released by Chad Bennington and Rose Weasley. Rumor is this adorable pair might actually be dating. Ring in with your thoughts!"_

Scorpius was so busy wondering if that rumor was true he missed the name of the song.

But he didn't miss the lyrics.

"_Every night that you're not there  
__Every dream that ends mid-air  
__Every light that stops its shining  
__Every time my heart starts crying _

_You're in my arms, a dreamlike phenomenon  
__But only your shadow lives on  
__Tell me how to let you go, how to walk away  
__And then I hear you say_

'_Look to the stars  
__Up above  
__And let  
__Them be enough  
__To heal your pain  
__To dry your eyes  
__To breathe again  
__To say goodbye'  
__They smile down, a bright spot in the night  
__To quiet the darkness in my troubled life  
__I loved you once, maybe still do  
__But I can't go on missing you  
__So I  
__Look to the stars_."

Scorpius froze, everything inside of him throbbing with an unexpected ache as he listened to each and every word, the rest of the world fading away around him.

_Look to the stars_.

That was his little secret. His coping mechanism. His way of making things okay in a world that wasn't.

And not only did she take it from him.

She exploited it.

He could have been angry. Probably should have been.

But he was too busy loving her.

Nearly ten months had gone by since he had last seen her, since he had last spoken to her. Ten months since he had confessed his love for her. Ten months since he walked out, since he had no other choice. Ten months without her.

And it was more clear now than ever that he still loved her.

Suddenly, the bar felt claustrophobic. He practically dropped his glass on to the bartop and rushed out, pouring out on to the sidewalk and letting the breath he didn't realize he was holding escape in a single gasp.

"Scorpius?" he heard Ella say beside him. And then he felt her hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong?"

He could only shake his head, trying to catch his breath with one exhale at a time.

When he finally did catch his breath, when he finally felt like the world wasn't crashing down around him, when he felt himself regain just a little bit of his composure, he turned to Ella and said, "I'm taking the job."

"The job" was a yearlong assignment with a privately funded American apothecary focused on currently incurable diseases. It had been offered to him just that morning and while they told him to think about it, he had very little to think about. Getting away from England, from where he had left his heart and to get away from reminders of _her_, not to mention getting away fromhis estranged family who he hadn't spoken to in ten months, had sounded like the most ideal situation he could have dreamed of.

The song only sealed the deal.

Rose had been alone in her apartment when the song first came over the radio. She was so surprised that she shattered a wine glass, listening to the almost agonizing words that fell from both her and Chad's lips. She felt the emotion in the lyrics, the melody taking over her every thought. She was so mesmerized that she hadn't even realized someone had walked into her apartment.

So she was startled when she saw Chad enter the kitchen with a grin on his face.

"Only one week after we recorded it and it's already on the radio!" he beamed, lifting her up and swinging her around.

She let out a squeak of surprise, followed by a feeble laugh, and smacked him on the shoulder. He reluctantly put her down, but the smile on his face only grew.

"That song is one of your best, Rose," he said. "I wish I could say there was more of me in the writing but that was all you."

Actually, it was all Scorpius.

And for the first time since she wrote the wrong, she admitted that out loud.

Chad looked surprised. "Scorpius?" he questioned cautiously.

"My…" she trailed off, not even sure what he had been. "He used to be my best friend."

As their song ended and a new song replaced it, Chad looked at her and said, "He used to be a lot more than that."

She swiftly shook her head. "No," she pleaded. "He really wasn't."

He was all ready to tell her she was in denial when she heard her front door open, quickly followed by it slamming shut as loud footsteps reverberated in the living room before a new presence appeared in her kitchen doorway.

"_Why didn't you ever tell me that you were in love with him_?"

Rose gaped at Albus, someone she hadn't had a real conversation with in over a year. "Who?"

Even Chad groaned at that, though it went ignored by Albus. "The Hogwarts lake squid," he drawled. "_Who the hell do you think I mean_?"

"I don't know," she spoke calmly. "Which is why I asked."

He glared at her, his hands stubbornly planted on his hips. "_Scorpius_," he hissed. "I heard the song, Rose. I heard what you were saying. Every word was about him."

"That doesn't mean I loved him," she grumbled.

He rolled his eyes and then repeated her words back to her. "Except for the part where you said 'I loved him once, maybe still do.'"

She felt her heart tighten but only shook her head at him. "You're taking that out of context."

"No, he isn't," Chad murmured.

"Oy, you stay out of it," she huffed.

Albus finally acknowledged the other man's presence. "Chad, I presume?"

He nodded.

"So," he said, folding his arms across his body, "You dating my cousin, or what?"

"_Al_," Rose groaned, glaring at him. "You out of anyone should know not to listen to stupid rumors from the press."

He shook his head dismissively. "I don't even care about you and Chad, I care about you and Scorpius."

She glared at him. "I think you made it pretty damned clear that you _don't _care about us," she seethed.

He sighed. "When did you know you loved him?"

"I never loved him," she muttered.

In unison, the two boys said, "Yes, you did."

She turned to Chad with a glare. "You, stay out of it. You know nothing about my friendship with him. You weren't there," she growled. She turned to Albus with an even more intense glare and said, "_And you weren't there either, Al._ You walked away, you turned your back on us, you discarded us like we meant nothing to you so you do not get to come back here and pretend like you know shit about anything that happened between us."

"I don't have to pretend," he sighed. "I know what happened because your song told me. How is it you can write the lyrics but not understand them?"

"I think I know what my own lyrics meant!"

"Listen to the song again, Rose," Albus spoke quietly, almost desperately. "_Really listen to it_."

"I don't need to-"

"I know listening to your heart has never been all that easy for you," Albus pleaded, shaking his head at her, "But I assure you, that song is your heart's way of telling you that you loved-"

"_Stop telling me what I felt_," she snapped.

"Listen to the song again," he pleaded. "Not for me but for you."

She had not been planning on spending her afternoon defending to her songwriting partner and her cousin her friendship, or whatever it was, with the boy who walked away from her. She didn't spend too much of her time thinking about him, knowing that she couldn't if she had any chance at moving on from the past, but when she did, the thoughts often hit her like an unexpected Mack truck to a lonely wanderer in the night. The memories hit her fast and they hit her hard, sometimes brought on by a single smell or a twinkling star in the night, and she felt consumed by them unexpectedly, but only for a few minutes before she forced the thoughts away, the memories too painful to even consider.

"Y'know what, Al?" said Rose when she regained some of her composure, "You decided over a year ago that you no longer wanted to be my friend. So how about you don't pretend to be one now."

She shoved past the two boys and escaped to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her and shutting them out.

She sat quietly on her bed, ignoring the racing of her heart, as she listened to the soft footsteps beyond her bedroom door slowly fade, telling her that the two boys had gone. She was grateful and yet as the silence took over, she was left with only her thoughts to keep her busy. Thoughts of Albus barging into her apartment, pretending to care when he had stopped so many months earlier. Thoughts of Chad pretending he understood what was in her heart when he had never known Scorpius. And thoughts of Scorpius, _so many thoughts of Scorpius_, and his soft eyes and full lips and quiet laugh and the way being around him had always been so easy.

Minutes passed, maybe even hours, before Rose slowly lifted herself off her bed, went over to the record player, and played her song.

As she listened to the words jump off the record player and seep into her soul, she felt the tears in her eyes begin to fall.

"_You're the snitch I just can't catch  
__You're the rock that makes no splash  
__You're the heart that cannot beat  
__You're the song that won't repeat_

_You stranded me here, you're gone and buried  
__Silent like a cemetery  
__Tell me how to let you go, how to walk away  
__And then I hear you say  
_

'_Look to the stars  
__Up above  
__And let  
__Them be enough  
__To heal your pain  
__To dry your eyes  
__To breathe again  
__To say goodbye'  
__They smile down, a bright spot in the night  
__To quiet the darkness in my troubled life.  
__I loved you once, maybe still do  
__But I can't go on missing you  
__So I  
__Look to the stars_."

As the song ended and a soft static filled the air, she took no notice of it, too enraptured by the sounds of her own heart beating, telling her all the things she had been too afraid to see for ten whole months.

Those song lyrics weren't from a girl who lost her best friend.

They were from a girl who lost the man she loved.

_ She loved Scorpius._

And she probably always had.

Everything was so clear to her, her muddled thoughts no longer. Why it had hurt so much to lose him, why her heart felt so constricted. Why her lyrics were filled with such powerful messages, why it was so easy to connect to their sentiment.

She loved him.

She loved how he could have made her smile just by walking into the room to the tiny dimple of his left cheek. She loved how he had always known what she was thinking before she even did. She loved how invincible he had made her feel, as if she could do anything and be anything she wanted. She loved how soft his lips were, how they'd press a kiss to her shoulder in the dead of the night when he thought she was asleep. She loved his passion for Potions and how easy it was to talk to her about it. She loved his fragile heart and she loved that he shared it with her. She loved him for trusting her, for never second-guessing her. She loved how they went from acquaintances to friends so easily, as if it was meant to be all along.

_ She loved him._

She loved everything about him.

And it only took her ten months to figure it out.

Ten months too late.

She spent the night at her window with tears streaming down her face as she stared out at the stars, wondering if Scorpius was out there somewhere staring at the same ones.

And when she couldn't wonder anymore, she found herself standing outside Scorpius' door, her heart screaming against her ribcage as she stared at the door she used to know so well. She thought of the many times she had barged in without knocking, to tell him exciting news or to just say hi. She thought of the smile that always greeted her and the way his eyes would light up just looking at her. And she wondered if it would be a smile and bright eyes staring back at her this time or if it would be something else entirely.

Turns out, it was neither.

For when she did eventually knock and the door opened, it wasn't Scorpius standing there at all but an unfamiliar man.

Rose blinked in surprise. "Oh," she said, shaking her head in confusion. "Is Scorpius here?"

The older man shook his head. "No, I'm sorry, he moved to America last week."

He said something else but Rose didn't hear him, too frozen and numb to the harsh truth of his words to register anything else going on around her.

She was too late.

Scorpius was gone.

She stood in that hallway long after the man had closed his door, all energy lost on her. She didn't know how much time had passed when she heard her name and for a moment of naivety, a brief moment, she thought it might be the person she came to see.

It wasn't.

"Rose? What are you doing here?" Albus asked.

Rose stared at the old blue door she had spent so much of her time knocking on but said nothing.

Albus followed her gaze towards Scorpius' door and glanced back at her. "Finally come to tell him you love him, hm?" he said in a teasing tone.

What he got in response was a rather violent glare before she shoved past him towards the elevator.

"Always lovely talking to you, Rose!" he called after her.

She ignored him, focusing on trying to blink back the tears out of her eyes with little success. They slipped down her cheeks as she thought of how stupid she had been, so afraid of seeing the truth in her heart that she avoided it instead. He had been hers, standing in front of her begging her to love him back, and she couldn't see it. She didn't want to see it. He had been right to say that she didn't like change and yet he had at some point come into her life and changed it for the better.

But now he was gone and she couldn't tell him all the things she had once been so afraid to say.

"Rose?" she heard her cousin say and before she knew it, he was standing right beside her. "What's wrong? What happened?"

She elevator doors dinged and then opened but she didn't step inside. Instead, she watched as they closed in front of her before saying, "He's gone."

His brow furrowed. "Who's gone?"

The tears in her eyes dried as the reality, the sad reality, sunk in. "He's gone," she repeated, shaking her head in disbelief. "He left. He moved to America. He's…he's just gone."

That didn't seem to clear anything up to Albus. "Who?" he pressured. "Scorpius?"

"I'm too late. Maybe if I had figured all of this out months ago, he wouldn't be gone. Maybe if I had just let myself…" she trailed off, shaking her head. "Well, it doesn't matter now I guess."

She went to press the down button again but Albus stopped her. "Hold up," he spoke perhaps a bit too forcefully. "You're saying that Scorpius moved to _America_?" Clearly he was finally catching on.

She just nodded.

"That can't…how…but…" he trailed off with a grunt of disbelief. As the situation caught up with him, he looked up at Rose. "Wait, what do you mean 'maybe if you had figured all of this out months ago?'"

She just shook her head, too drained to even get into it. "Like I said," she muttered, "It doesn't matter."

She stepped around him in order to press the down button on the elevator but that didn't stop him from questioning her.

"You do love him, don't you."

She said nothing.

Which ultimately said it all.

"I have to say," Albus sighed, "I never saw that one coming."

She glared at her cousin. "Yeah, well, how would you have? You turned your back on the both of us a long time ago."

The door opened and Rose stepped into it. At the last second, Albus joined her.

"What are you doing?" she sighed. "That was your floor."

"I was confused and hurt, Rose. I told Scorpius to stay away from you and he didn't. And you deserved better. I was so convinced that if the world didn't find a way to eat you alive that he was going to do it for them. He was my best friend but that didn't mean he was good for you. He's dealt with a lot of pain and insecurity and I didn't want that for you," Albus spoke softly, almost desperately. With a soft shake of the head, he said in summary, "I thought he was going to hurt you."

She said nothing at first as the elevator descended. "Ironic, isn't it," she muttered.

"What is?"

A lump in her throat formed as she spoke her next words. "That I was the one who ended up hurting him."

The elevator stopped and the doors opened to the lobby. Rose stepped out and Albus quickly followed. "How did you do that?" he asked cautiously.

She stopped halfway across the lobby and turned around. "He told me he loved me and I told him not to."

Albus' mouth parted as he attempted to process those words. He blinked once. And then again. And for a third time before he said, "I really didn't see that coming."

Rose met the shock in her cousin's eyes with defiance in her own. "What, never thought you'd see a Malfoy falling in love with a Weasley?" she growled.

He hesitated before saying, "Never thought I'd see that Malfoy fall in love ever."

She felt the unexpected prickle of tears again and blinked them back quickly. "Yeah, well, I have a feeling that he now wishes he never had," she choked out, her voice barely above a soft whisper.

And then the tears were falling and she couldn't stop them and there was Albus to wrap his arms around her and tell her that things were going to be okay.

She wasn't so sure about that.

But with Scorpius gone, Rose needed a friend now more than ever so she welcomed Albus back into her life.

Rose told herself to move on, to forget about Scorpius and put him in her past. She told herself that loving him had been fleeting, a mere moment of time that had come and gone.

It was a lie.

And she realized that two weeks later when she joined Chad on stage at a local theater. He chose their soulful ballad to be the last song of the night, wanting it to linger with the audience. When he introduced her and brought her on stage, the audience went crazy, screaming and cheering and clapping for her and Rose felt an unexpected smile trickle on to her face, realizing in that moment that she finally got the fame she never thought she wanted.

The smile faded as they sang and thoughts of Scorpius flooded her mind.

Halfway through the song, she could barely hold it together. She felt a sudden rush of emotions as tears sprang to her eyes.

By the end of the song, the tears were sliding down her cheeks.

And the audience loved every minute of it.

Chad said a few words thanking the crowd before following the last song up with an encore of a more fast-paced one. Rose used that time to escape the stage.

She stood in the wings, trying to catch her breath and stop the tears from falling, listening to Chad croon about lost dreams so as not to listen to the thoughts in her head.

And when Chad was done, he climbed off the stage and immediately sought her out.

"You okay?" he asked softly.

Rose forced a smile on her face. "Of course."

He hesitated before saying, "You were thinking of him on stage, weren't you."

Her initial instinct was to lie but the emotion in her heart was too raw and real, and she knew no lie could cover it up. But she wasn't aching for him or missing him or dreaming of what could have been.

She was letting him go.

"I never really said goodbye to him. He was there one minute and in the next, he wasn't," she whispered, the ache growing stronger in her fragile heart. "I guess this was finally my way of saying goodbye."

Not knowing what to say, Chad just reached out and embraced her.

Rose Weasley's name was everywhere. She became a celebrity, more than she already was, nearly overnight. Her recent demo sold off every shelf, her song with Chad soared to the number one spot on the charts and stayed there for months.

And Scorpius hated every minute of it.

Not because he wasn't happy for her or even proud, because so much of him was, but because he couldn't seem to go anywhere without her name popping up.

She was in the headlines, on the radio, on the lips of passersby. He had moved across the Atlantic to get away from her, to get away from all the reminders of her, but there was nowhere for him to hide. He threw himself into his work now more than ever, socialized with his coworkers and went out with them to the local pubs to have a few drinks after a long day at work, went to a few American Quidditch matches, and tried to put England behind him. And slowly, very slowly, it started to work.

Until there was an unexpected visitor at his door days before Christmas.

"Dad," he said, shocked for it had been exactly a year since he had last spoken to his father. "What are you doing here?"

"Can't a father drop by to see his son?" he said with a nervous chuckle.

"It takes nearly a week to get an international apparition license approved so I hardly think this is just a spur-of-the-moment drop-in," Scorpius drawled.

His father frowned. "May I come in?"

Scorpius hesitated before stepping aside and gesturing him inside.

His father studied the room, essentially just four walls and a couch along with a tower of unpacked boxes, before saying with an air of slight amusement, "Nice place."

"Yeah, real homey," Scorpius deadpanned. "Now, how about you tell me what you're doing here?"

Draco Malfoy turned towards his son, his expression full of so much regret. "I was going to have this conversation with you when you were home for the holidays but you declined the invitation to come home this year."

"Yeah, well, it was never much of a home," Scorpius blurted out.

His father seemed to grow even more uncomfortable at those words, turning to face his son with a sad frown. "Why don't we sit?" he suggested.

"Why don't you tell me what's going on?"

A sigh fell from his father's lips, followed by a long bout of silence as he stared at the scuffed laminate floors. He said nothing at first, gathering his thoughts in a careful manner, before he finally looked up and said, "Your mother and I are getting a divorce."

Those words rang in Scorpius' ears as he tried to figure out how they made him feel. Sad? Angry? Confused?

No, what he really felt was nothing.

"I thought you and Mum didn't believe in divorce," he eventually said.

"We didn't think we did," he spoke softly. "But we believe in happiness more."

Happiness.

Was that even possible as a Malfoy?

"The press is going to eat you two alive," Scorpius pointed out.

Draco sighed. "Yeah, that thought did cross our minds. Perhaps that's why it's taken us this long," he murmured. "Because all we ever wanted to do was protect you."

Those words confused Scorpius. "Me?" he said, surprised. "What do I have to do with this?"

His father looked contemplative as he took a hesitant seat on the couch. "Everything," he murmured with a mere shrug. "I know what it's like to be judged for a name only. I know that my actions, and your grandparents', in the war has tarnished our name and reputation forever. And you deserve better than that. You deserve so much more than someone else's past haunting you forever. I always knew I'd have to live with my grievous mistakes but I never wanted you to. So I made perhaps an even bigger mistake in trying to hide and avoid the past, hoping it might give you a chance to be someone else. I know now that that's not possible. That you will always be a Malfoy. And while it may be too late for me, I just hope that one day you can find a way to not be ashamed of that."

It was possibly more words his father had spoken to him in his entire lifetime. It was definitely the most meaningful words he had spoken. And Scorpius didn't know what to make of it.

Scorpius had never outwardly said, or even really thought, that he was ashamed of his family and the name he bore, but as his father pleaded with him, it was so clear that shame was exactly what he felt all these years. He had never been comfortable in his own skin, never felt proud of who he was or where he came from. He pretended not to be bothered by his family history, pretended he didn't care. He ignored the gossip, throwing himself into his studies or his work so as to have something to keep him busy, and acted above all of it. All while resenting the very name he bore.

But if he as mere offspring was feeling that way, he couldn't imagine what his father must be feeling.

Scorpius wanted to lie, to tell his father he wasn't ashamed, but deceit seemed to be all that Malfoys were good for. He wanted to change that. "I hope so, too, Dad."

His father stood up off the couch and Scorpius assumed he was going to leave, but he didn't. Instead, he looked at his son, almost bashfully, and said, "Your sister's name is Delilah Davis. She's eleven and in her first year at Hogwarts. I'm sure she would love to hear from you."

That was the last thing he said before he walked out.

The Malfoy name was everywhere. They became celebrities, more than they already were, nearly overnight. The scandalous divorce and the now public illegitimate child hit the headlines and stayed there for months, dragging their entire family history through the mud.

And Rose hated every minute of it.

Not because she was angry at the way his family was being portrayed, because so much of her was, but because she couldn't seem to go anywhere without his name popping up.

"I can't believe Scorpius had some half-sister floating around in the world all these years," Albus said to Rose on a Tuesday in early January while the two of them shared a drink at the Leaky Cauldron between her radio interviews. "Do you think he knew?"

Rose hesitated before saying, "He knew."

Albus turned to her, startled. _"You _knew?"

She took a sip of her butterbeer and nodded. "We were sharing secrets one night and he just blurted it out. He didn't know much. Didn't even know her name. Found some photo of the girl in his father's desk."

Albus let out a low whistle. "Damn," he murmured. "That couldn't have been easy to find."

"Nothing in that family seems easy," she spoke softly.

"You're telling me," Albus sighed, shaking his head.

Rose took another sip of butterbeer before saying, "We shouldn't be talking about him like this."

Albus shrugged. "Why not? Everyone else is," he responded, perhaps with a bit too much bitterness.

"Exactly why we shouldn't," she said stubbornly. "He deserves better."

Later, Rose realized that it was the first time she spoke, or even thought, of Scorpius in three months where she didn't walk away feeling every bit of her broken heart.

Perhaps she really had said goodbye to him.

"You seem different," Chad had said to her on the last day of January as the two of them strolled aimlessly through the Diagon Alley snow-covered streets.

"Different?" she questioned. "How?"

He pondered the easy question before saying, "Happier."

She was startled by those words but only for a moment. She had spent ten months mourning a friend she had lost and while it had ended with her realizing she had been in love with him, it also ended with her putting him in the past so she could move on with her life. So she couldn't be sure it was happiness she felt but she did feel a huge burden being lifted off her shoulders and that certainly made it easier to smile every day.

"I have a lot of things in my life to look forward to," she said with a shrug. "Why shouldn't I be happy?"

He smiled down at her. "You should."

And she smiled up at him and for the first time in a long time, she felt as if everything might just turn out okay.

While Rose was going through a personal revelation, Scorpius was writing back and forth with Delilah. The first letter had been the hardest. He sat at his desk, staring at the blank piece of parchment as he tried to come up with the right words to say. Those words never came. So he just picked up his quill and began writing. He talked about himself mostly, leaving his family out of it completely for he didn't know how she felt about them. He told her where he was living and what he was doing and he mentioned his favorite classes in Hogwarts and he asked her what House she was in and he just wrote and wrote until he couldn't write anymore.

He didn't know if he'd get a response, was expecting nothing in return, so he was shocked when a letter was returned to him only two days later. She, too, made no mention of their shared father, instead choosing to focus on the friends she made in Slytherin, her favorite classes, her favorite professors, what she had done over the holidays, what she was planning to do over the summer, and she signed it "_your sister_."

Scorpius had a sister.

Maybe his family didn't have to be so bad after all.

Easter break was rapidly approaching and Scorpius asked Delilah if she wanted to meet up in person.

She said yes.

So Scorpius applied for an international apparition license and apparated back to England for the first time since he moved across the Atlantic.

They met up at a teashop off the Diagon Alley beaten path and they both recognized the awkward tension the moment she sat down. Being chatty over parchment was one thing. Looking at each other, seeing their resemblances and knowing that they came from the same father, felt far more intense than either realized.

Scorpius knew it was time to put the hippogriff in the room behind them.

"Our father isn't perfect," he spoke softly. "Far from it. He's not the easiest guy to love. He doesn't open up much. He doesn't know how. He's ashamed of who he is, of his past, of his name. He's not exactly a good guy. But he isn't a bad one either."

Delilah stared up at him with her bright blue eyes. "He knew I existed and did nothing," she spoke stubbornly. "If that doesn't scream 'bad guy' I don't know what does."

Scorpius hesitated before saying, "That screams 'scared guy,' not bad."

Those words seemed to confuse her. "What about me would have scared him?"

Not sure how much Delilah knew of the Malfoy family history, he treaded carefully. "He and his parents did a lot of questionable things in the past, a lot of things that have tainted our last name. He was trying to hold on to whatever last dignity he thought we had, and in his mind, that unfortunately meant keeping his indiscretions quiet. Which is ironically the least dignified thing he probably could have done."

Delilah fiddled with her teacup, staring at anything but him. "I always just figured he was ashamed of me," she muttered.

"No," Scorpius said almost immediately, "He was ashamed of himself. He just ended up taking it out on the people around him, including you. And I'm sorry that he did that to you. You deserved better."

She said nothing at first, her eyes grazing the paisley teacup. "I suppose if you're his son," she eventually said before looking up and meeting his gaze, "Then he can't be all that bad."

It was one of the nicest compliments Scorpius could ever remember getting.

"In a way," Scorpius said hesitantly, "You're lucky. You may have Malfoy blood but you don't have the name."

Her brow furrowed. "Why does that make me lucky?"

He shrugged. "It means you won't go your whole life being judged for it."

She still looked confused, angry almost. "Well, that's stupid," she huffed. "Why should people judge you for something as simple as a last name? It's not like whatever bad things the people before you did means that _you're _bad."

"Tell that to the rest of the world," he blurted out.

She stared at him and took a small sip of tea before saying, "Sounds like maybe your father isn't the only one ashamed of who he is."

For an eleven-year-old, she was incredibly insightful.

"But how do you expect the rest of the world to stop judging you if you continue to do it to yourself?"

Too insightful.

"Are you sure you're just twelve?" he said with a sigh.

She leaned back in her chair with a beaming smile. "I'm going to take that as a compliment."

He chuckled and it was then that he realized the awkwardness was gone.

"So, do you have a girlfriend?"

Or not.

"_What_?" he sputtered.

She shrugged. "It's just a question."

"A random one," he laughed.

"A random one you're avoiding."

He rolled his eyes. "No, I don't have a girlfriend."

"Why not?"

He considered it a rather impressive feat that his thoughts didn't immediately conjure up visions of Rose. "Do you have a boyfriend?" he deflected with a smirk.

"Ew, I'm only eleven," she said, scrunching up her nose. "I have plenty of time for that. You, Scorp, are not getting any younger."

"I'm only twenty-two years old!" he groaned but she was too busy laughing to acknowledge his words.

He tossed a sugar cube at her and she shrieked, her laughs only increasing in volume and it put a huge smile on Scorpius' face for maybe, just maybe, he was finally learning the real meaning of family.

He felt happy for the first time in a long time.

So of course something just had to go and ruin that.

Hours later, the two of them finally stood up from their table, leaving their cold tea behind, when he heard a familiar voice, _her _familiar voice, just inches away from him.

"I'll have two boxes of the peppermint tea."

That was all she said but it was enough to send a shiver straight down his spine.

Turning around, so very slowly, he saw the redhead standing at the counter digging through her bag for a few sickles.

And maybe he could have escaped before being seen.

If Delilah hadn't ruined it.

"Oh, my God, you're Rose Weasley!" she squealed, perhaps a bit too loudly.

Before Scorpius knew what was happening, that very redhead at the counter turned around. She smiled at the fan and was about to say something when her eyes met Scorpius in a shocking double-take. She said nothing and neither did he, their eyes locking in an overwhelming amount of unexpected surprise.

"Scorpius," she eventually croaked out when she found the ability to speak again.

He forced a smile out. "Rose."

Delilah's eyes widened, her eyes darting back and forth between them before finally settling on her half-brother. "_You know Rose Weasley_?"

All he could do was nod.

"I cannot believe you're only telling me this now," Delilah muttered, shaking her head before glancing back over at the frozen redhead with a goofy grin. "I love your music. 'Look to the Stars' is my _all-time favorite song_! I listen to it on loop over and over. You're incredible!"

Rose, slowly regaining her composure, somehow tore her eyes away from Scorpius long enough to smile down at the younger girl. "Thank you, that's very sweet."

"When are you going to record another album?" Delilah prodded, her eyes beaming.

She chuckled nervously. "Soon hopefully. I'm currently writing a collection of new songs."

(Or at least she was trying to. She had a bad case of writer's block.)

Delilah squealed and Rose used that time to once again meet Scorpius' gaze. "I didn't realize you were back in town," she spoke almost curiously. "I thought you moved to America."

Scorpius looked at her in surprise. "How did you know about that?"

She shrugged awkwardly. "I hear things."

He still seemed confused but didn't push the subject. Glancing down at his half-sister, he just said, "I'm just in town for a few days for Delilah's Easter break."

Rose nodded and she, too, looked at the girl. "I guess that would make you Delilah."

She grinned. "I'm Scorpius' sister," she explained and Scorpius inwardly cringed for a part of him had been hoping to keep that relationship quiet. "Well," she hastily corrected, "Half-sister."

The surprise shone in Rose's eyes as she met Scorpius' gaze, her mouth parting as she just stared at him. "Oh," she eventually said with a proud smile. "Well, I might be biased, but you've got yourself one hell of a half-brother."

Delilah smiled up at her brother and said, "I'm beginning to realize that."

And if Scorpius had just let that be the end of the conversation, if he had just said his goodbyes and swept out of the teashop with Delilah at that very moment, perhaps he would have been able to walk away with his heart very much in tact.

But he didn't say goodbye and he didn't walk out of the teashop. Instead, he got a front row view as Chad Bennington wandered into the teashop and planted a kiss on Rose's cheek. "Hey, Babe."

As the tension in Scorpius' eyes met the guilt in Rose's, Delilah let out yet another excited squeal and said, "Oh, my Godric, are you two actually dating!?"

Scorpius couldn't tear his eyes off of Rose no matter how hard he tried, the seconds ticking by more awkward than the one before it.

"Yeah," said Rose eventually, her eyes unable to look anywhere but at him. "We're dating."

Delilah squealed again and Scorpius forced out a smile. He mumbled something along the lines of 'congratulations' before grabbing Delilah and making a beeline to the exit.

When they left the shop, Delilah immediately wanted to know how he knew Rose Weasley and he paused, not even sure what he was supposed to tell the twelve-year-old before he finally settled on the very lame excuse of, "We used to go to school together."

Right, like that's all it ever was.

Meanwhile, Chad was asking Rose a similar question. "He looked familiar. Have I met him before?"

"I don't think so, no," she said in an attempt to be coy.

"Oh," he mused. "Who were they?"

Rose didn't know what to say, how to explain that she had just unexpectedly run into the only person she had ever loved, who had been the focal point of her songs for almost an entire year. "Just…" she trailed off with an awkward shrug. "They're just people I used to know a long time ago."

He didn't question it and she was grateful.

Chad had kissed her for the first time on Valentine's Day in all its clichéd glory. The two of them had gone to dinner together, laughed for most of the night and perhaps got a bit too tipsy off wine, and when he walked her back to her place, he caught her off-guard by kissing her. Rose had been shocked, confused even, but when he said he had wanted to do that for a long time, she realized in that moment that maybe it wasn't just her friendship with Scorpius she had replaced with Chad but so much more. So she smiled and kissed him again. They had been dating ever since.

She had practically begged him to keep it quiet while they figured out what it was and what it could mean. But the truth was, she was scared. The last time she fell for someone, she hadn't even realized it until it was too late. It proved to her that listening to her heart wasn't something she was very good at. And she didn't want to hurt Chad, nor did she want to get hurt herself. She couldn't go through another blindsiding heartbreak again. She couldn't live with the guilt and the pain for another ten months. She couldn't pretend her heart wasn't more fragile now than it had ever been before.

So while she dated Chad because being with him was somehow both perfect and easy, that didn't mean that listening to her heart was.

Her family loved Chad, probably more than they loved her, and monopolized most of his time during the infamous Easter Feast at the Burrow. Her father spent most of the night chatting about the Chudley Cannons with Chad, their shared favorite team in the league, and her mother recommended certain books to him for he always had a decent amount of down time when he was on the road on tour. His grandparents gushed about how polite and well-mannered he was. He helped some of the younger cousins do the dishes, so they were pleased. And when they all went out back and started a casual game of Quidditch, he showed off his chasing skills and easily became one of the MVPs of the night.

"You did good, Rosie," James said to her towards the end of the night.

She looked at him quizzically. "I'm a rubbish Quidditch player, James."

He shook his head. "I'm not talking about Quidditch. I'm talking about the boyfriend. He's a much more suitable choice than the Malfoy boy," he muttered.

"We were never dating," she reminded him.

"Of course you weren't. Could you imagine a Weasley dating a Malfoy?" he had laughed.

Rose didn't know what to say, or even think, so she said nothing at all.

Later that night, as she and Albus were saying their goodbyes, she blurted out to him, "I ran into Scorpius."

Albus' mouth dropped open. "Uh…what?" was all he could think of to say.

"At Tiddywink's Tea Shoppe yesterday afternoon," she murmured.

"And you are only bringing this up now?" he hissed, glancing over his shoulder as he watched Chad finish up a conversation with Teddy and Victoire. "I thought Scorpius was in America."

"He was. Is," she corrected. "He was just back for the weekend."

Albus could only shake his head in disbelief, clearly trying to figure out what to make of that. "What did he say? What did _you _say? Was it weird? What was he doing in a tea shop? How long did you talk to him? How did it feel? How-"

"That's a lot of questions," Rose groaned.

Albus frowned, his eyes continuing to watch Chad. "What did Chad say about it?"

Rose hesitated. "I didn't tell him."

Albus swiveled his head in her direction. "You didn't?"

She slowly shook her head. "I didn't really know what to say about it. So I just said nothing."

He looked slightly uncomfortable at that confession and with an awkward sigh, he asked, "Do you still have feelings for Scorpius?"

"No," she said almost immediately. "I said my goodbyes to Scorpius a long time ago."

"So…" Albus trailed off hesitantly, "Then why didn't you tell Chad about it?"

Rose wasn't sure how to respond, not even entirely sure she really knew the answer. But when she gathered her thoughts, she felt that the answer was right there on the tip of her tongue. "He's a part of my past," she spoke softly. "I'd kinda just like to keep him there."

Scorpius told Ella the exact same thing when they met for a drink on Monday evening.

"I spent a lot of time dwelling over it," he said, fingering the edge of his beer bottle. "I never really forgot about Rose, probably never will, but she's no longer prevalent. She's just someone from my past."

Ella didn't look convinced. "So am I supposed to believe this was some form of closure?"

Scorpius hesitated before shrugging. "Yeah, I guess it might have been."

She took a sip of her cocktail, her eyes never leaving those of Scorpius'. "I think you're just trying to tell yourself that because now she's dating that Chad guy."

He sighed. "I spent too many hours loving her, Ella," he said softly. "I can't do it anymore."

She met the pleading in his gaze and nodded. "Just because you can't love her anymore doesn't mean you don't."

He had no argument so they both grew quiet, pensive almost, before Ella spoke again. "Do you ever miss her?" she questioned hesitantly and the way she asked had Scorpius wondering how much she missed her ex-boyfriend.

Scorpius let himself think of Rose, of the four years they were friends, and while his heart ached a bit, he realized it wasn't out of heartbreak anymore. "I miss who I got to be with her," he whispered, thinking back to a version of himself who smiled every time she walked into the room. Who was happy despite so much turmoil going on in his life. He missed just laughing with her and feeling as if everything might actually turn out okay. She was one of the very few people in his entire life who he felt he could be himself around and not be judged for it. He didn't miss loving her. He missed loving himself when she was around.

Ella finished off her drink before saying, "You'll find it again someday."

Scorpius wasn't convinced.

Not because he wasn't optimistic about finding it again someday but because he wasn't so sure he wanted to.

He had never really wanted to fall in love in the first place. He had seen what it could do to a person, how easily it could destroy them. He had seen how fake it all was and how cruel and unforgiving it could be. He had never believed in it because he had never even seen the upside of it, never even thought there was an upside. And then Rose came along and somehow changed his mind without him even realizing it.

But all it got him in the end was a broken heart.

And one unexpected broken heart in a lifetime seemed more than enough for him.

While Scorpius returned to America, Rose and Chad's outed relationship was splashed across headlines everywhere. Rose hated it, for she already felt wary about being in a new relationship without the world following their every move, but Chad reassured her that nothing was going to change between them except perhaps the chance of more cameras in their faces.

"I get enough cameras in my face," she whined. "I don't think I can take anymore."

He laughed and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, drawing her towards him. She buried her face into his chest, craving the safety and the comfort she felt enveloped in his arms. "The world is full of people who are going to judge but in my world, there's only you and me," he murmured, planting a kiss in her hair.

She leaned her head back to stare up at him, an appreciative smile tugging at the end of her lips. "Is that a line from one of your songs?" she teased.

He laughed. "Are you going to assume that anything romantic I might say comes from one of my songs?"

She snaked her arms tightly around his waist and smiled up at him. "Pretty much, yeah."

The press couldn't get enough of them. The headlines never seemed to cease. But slowly, Rose stopped reading them all. She stopped wondering what the world thought of her. She stopped questioning everything she did and said with Chad. She stopped second-guessing her feelings. She stopped being so afraid.

And the most unusual thing happened.

She became happy.

Summer was coming to a close when it was suggested to Rose that she put her next album on hold (probably because she refused to sing anyone's songs but her own but her most recent songwriting had been mediocre at best) and go on a three-monthlong tour with Chad. It would be her very first tour, based solely on her first album and of course the one popularized song with Chad, and she was excited but nervous about it. She knew the tour was mostly for Chad but she was thrilled to be a part of it, no matter how small her role might be.

They stayed in fancy hotels, did endless interviews, and spent nearly every night on stage at some of the biggest venues she ever could have imagined. It felt like a dream. A dream she had never known she had wanted but a dream she was so grateful to have gotten.

She and Chad spent a lot of time together collaborating on new songs and while she knew she needed the help, a part of her felt disheartened that she had at some point run out of things to say. There were times she felt really annoyed by it but Chad told her that every songwriter went through writer's block and there would come a day where she'd snap out of it. And since he had never steered her wrong before, she trusted his opinion.

"I hate songwriting," Rose pouted on an early September morning when she was aware just how gimmicky her rhymes felt.

Chad rolled over in bed with a laugh and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. "No, you don't."

She ripped out the page in front of her and tossed it towards the trash bin. She missed it by a few inches. "I'm going to go back to being a lame legal secretary. At least then I won't be letting down thousands of fans."

"No, you'd only be letting down yourself," he pointed out, resting his head in her lap.

She reached for his blonde hair, massaging his scalp as she tried to think of the emotion she was trying to relay in her songs. She was going for a feeling of euphoria, something she had never cared to write about before, but she felt that she had spent nearly a lifetime on angst that it was time to show the world that there was nothing wrong with being happy. That in fact, being happy was the one thing that every single person in the world strove for.

And she had it.

She felt almost guilty about it for she knew there was so much suffering and confusion around her, in a world of people who were just trying to fit in and find their place for she knew all too well what that felt like. But she had finally found it, with her music and with Chad.

And while it was the single most scariest thing she had ever felt, to know just how easily that happiness could be stripped away (for it had happened to her so quickly and unexpectedly), it was also wildly exhilarating.

"Take a break from the writing for now. It's not even seven in the morning yet," Chad murmured, stifling a yawn. Glancing up at her, a smirk appeared on his face as he pulled himself up and pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder. "If you ask me, there are far better things we could be doing with our early morning," he whispered suggestively.

She pushed her notebook on to the side table with a chuckle. "Oh? And what might that be?" she said curiously. "Breakfast?" she teased.

He laughed and in one swift motion, flipped her over so he was straddling with her. Ignoring the yelp and the laugh that spilled from her mouth, he leaned in, inches away from her face and whispered, "I was thinking more along the lines of _dessert_."

She barely had time to laugh before his lips were pressed up against hers.

Scorpius wouldn't say he had found happiness but for the first time in his life, he wasn't unhappy.

October was upon them and with it came the end of Scorpius' yearlong American assignment. He was nervous about returning home but yet hopeful at the same time. His parents' civil divorce had become old news and the few times he had written to his parents, much to his very surprise, they seemed happier than he could ever remember. His mother was dating someone new and had stopped drinking her feelings away. His father was slowly building a relationship with his daughter at the same time that Scorpius was trying to do the same. They all stopped resenting each other and Scorpius wondered if perhaps the divorce was a blessing in disguise for all of them. Maybe it wasn't so bad being a Malfoy after all.

But then again, maybe it was.

He had packed up his things in America, closed out the reports and projects he had been working on, and returned to England at the beginning of November. He only told his parents and Delilah about his return to England but when he ran into James Potter just outside the Diagon Alley post office, he had a feeling his homecoming would make its way to the ears of many others soon thereafter.

"Malfoy?" James had said with a bit of a snarl and Scorpius cringed at the familiar voice. "Last I heard, you ran away to America."

"Nice to see you, too, James," Scorpius sighed with an intense amount of sarcasm as James Potter was quite possibly his least favorite Potter.

Although Albus was certainly high on that list as well.

"So what are you doing skulking around Diagon Alley when you're supposed to be across the pond?"

Scorpius didn't know what compelled him to say, "I moved back."

James looked at him before letting out a light groan. "I was afraid you'd say that," he growled. "I liked you far better when you weren't around."

"Y'know what, James?" Scorpius drawled, "I know you didn't like me much back in Hogwarts because you thought I was a bad influence on your brother and therefore your family, and I know you really didn't like the fact that I was fooling around with your cousin, but I quite literally have no ties to your family anymore so your animosity is frankly trivial and unnecessary."

He tried walking away but James' next words stopped him.

"I don't care about whatever ties you may or may not have had with my family. You were bad news from the start, your family full of nothing but scandals. And the last thing that my family has ever needed was more scandal. So excuse me for trying to protect the people I care about from getting swept up in any of that."

Scorpius would never know why it was those words that finally set him off but they were.

"My family may have had their share of problems and yes, they have made _plenty of mistakes_ and you're right, the scandals just keep on bloody coming, but I would rather bear the Malfoy name and let our adversity only strengthen who we are than be a spineless, overcritical bigot like the man—no, the _boy _that you are. We aren't out here singing the praises of our past mistakes. We own them, we hold ourselves accountable, we know what we did was wrong and inexcusable, and we let ourselves move on. So what gives you the right to judge my family for their past? _What gives you the right to judge me_?" he snarled, years worth of anger finally exploding out of his mouth. "I have quite literally done nothing to you. I've done nothing to your family except be a friend. _A good friend_. So don't you dare pretend that I'm the bad guy here when it is so clear to me that the bad guy, _the judgmental guy_, is the one looking me in the eyes right now."

James looked surprised by his retort for Scorpius had always brushed his insults off before, never bothering to stoop to his level. While James was an in-your-face kind of guy, Scorpius had always been a walk-away-before-you-say-something-you'll-regret kind of guy. Only, Scorpius wasn't walking away this time.

"You know why you judge me?" Scorpius continued when James said nothing, too stunned to even try to come up with a response. "Because you only see what you want to see: a surname and a surname only. But I am more than that. I am a human being with real feelings and yes, a real past. I will always have to live with the Malfoy name. I will always have to live with their mistakes, their flaws, _their past_. But that does not mean I have to live _in_ it. So the only thing I have to say to you is _screw you_."

Scorpius walked away, proud, and hoped that James might one day learn a little something called humility.

Later that week, the Potters assembled at home like they often did on Fridays for a family dinner. Lily spent most of the meal chattering away about her latest boyfriend, a guy that none of them liked very much (but then again, they all knew he wouldn't last for the Potter kids weren't strong on commitment), and later, Albus and James had somehow been stuck finishing up the dishes.

It was then that James turned to Albus and said, "I ran into Scorpius a few days ago." Hesitating, he added, "Maybe he's not as bad as I always thought he was."

Albus nearly dropped a plate as he turned to James, stunned. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, resembling that of a fish, before he sputtered, "I don't even know what to comment on first. That you ran into Scorpius when he's supposed to be in America, that you called him Scorpius even though I was certain you never knew his first name, or that you just said _he wasn't that bad_."

James just shrugged and handed him another plate to dry.

"Ah, yes, thank you for clearing all of that up," Albus drawled sarcastically, striking James' thigh with his dish towel.

James scooted away with a jerk, glaring at his brother. "What's there to clear up?"

Albus gaped at him. "Uh, _all of it_?" he hissed.

James hesitated before shrugging again. "I always thought our family was better off not associating with those who fought on the other side of the war, knowing that our family's legacy and integrity is something the world believes in. But why does the rest of the world get a say in what _I _believe in?" he murmured, staring straight ahead wistfully. "Judging Scorpius was easy because that's what people expected. But he never did anything to deserve it. I was a real jerk to him because I could be not because there was any good reason to be."

Albus was both impressed and proud of his brother and when Rose returned mid-November from her tour with Chad, Albus sought her out almost immediately and told her all the things that James had told him.

She only focused on the part where James ran into Scorpius.

"So is he back for good?" Rose questioned.

"Did you hear anything I just said?" Albus groaned. "I think my brother might be growing up. _It's weird_."

Rose shrugged. "Well, I can't say I'm not glad to hear it," she muttered before asking once again, "So is Scorpius back in England for good or just visiting again?"

"Of course I'm glad to hear it," Albus agreed, ignoring her question. "He's always been an arse to Scorpius for no good reason. I'm just happy he finally realized it."

"Yeah, I'm plenty aware what an arse to Scorpius he was considering James was the reason Scorpius and I went our separate ways," Rose grumbled irritably, thinking back to that fateful party in James' penthouse loft. "And are you purposely avoiding my question?"

"No, I just don't know the answer—wait, _what_?" Albus said, vehemently jerking his head towards her with shocked eyes. "What the hell do you meant he was the reason you and Scorpius went your separate ways?"

Rose realized then that she might have said too much. "He caught us snogging one night and didn't like it one bit," she spoke vaguely. "Do you think Scorpius has his own place or just staying with his fam-"

"Uh-oh, what do you mean exactly by 'he didn't like it one bit?'"

"He said some things," he murmured. "When do you think Scorpius got-"

"What things, Rose?" he asked impatiently.

Rose sighed, clinking the ice in her glass back and forth as she contemplated the question. "It's nothing he hasn't been saying for years," he murmured. "He's a Malfoy, we're the Weasleys and the Potters, and our worlds don't mix. It was the first time I actually ever felt as if Scorpius was offended by that. Not because he hadn't been offended in the past. But because I think on that particular night, it made him realize that whatever feelings he may have had for me would never amount to anything."

Albus was staring at her with an intense amount of curiosity and surprise in his eyes. "Whatever feelings he had?" he eventually repeated with a bit of tut. "It's called love, Rose."

She just shrugged. "It was a long time ago."

Rose seemed over it but Albus wasn't.

When Scorpius opened his door to an unexpected knock in the beginning of December, he was not expecting Albus Potter to be standing there.

"You are a hard person to track down, Scorpius Malfoy," Albus said.

Scorpius stared at him before saying, his voice as icy as the sidewalks, "Evidently not hard enough."

They both stood there, one boy feeling awkward and the other feeling angry, before Albus spoke again. "I'm sorry."

Scorpius scoffed, "For what exactly?"

"Everything," he spoke immediately. "For thinking the worst of you, for getting so mad, for being so stubborn, for thinking you were going to find some way to unintentionally hurt her, for not caring enough to-"

"Yeah, okay, I think I get it," Scorpius drawled. "Is that all?"

Albus realized then that apologizing was going to be a lot harder than he originally thought. "You were right," he spoke softly. "That day I ran into you in the hallway of our apartment, you said I wasn't your best friend, that I never treated you the way a friend would have. And you were right. I didn't. I chose Rose's feelings over yours and that wasn't fair."

Scorpius grew quiet, dissecting Albus' words carefully in his mind before he said, "It's not that you chose Rose's feelings over mine, Al. It's that you never even considered mine at all."

"I know," he spoke sadly.

"No," Scorpius spoke bitterly, "_You don't_. You don't know what it's like to feel as if there is not a single person in the world who cares about you. To feel neglected and abandoned by the people who you trusted the most. You don't know what it's like to feel judged, to feel ridiculed, to feel hated by every person that ever crosses your path. To feel as if you're nothing, as if your life is nothing, as if you don't deserve a place in this world. You don't know what it's like to feel helpless and hopeless and know that there is nobody, _no one_, who has your fucking back. _You don't get it_. You don't get it because this was never about Rose. It was about you and me and how quickly and easily you turned your back on me for no good reason at all."

Scorpius was on the verge of hysterics, the anger pulsating inside of him like never before, and all Albus could do was stare at him in both shock and shame as he finally realized that perhaps it wasn't Rose who hurt Scorpius most of all, but him.

As if he was reading Albus' mind, Scorpius continued. "When Rose and I went our separate ways," he continued in a hoarse whisper, his voice now lost of all anger and replaced with painful grief, "It was unbearable. Getting over her was the hardest thing I ever had to do. But I understood why it had to happen. I understood that it was the way things needed to be. I loved her and…well, she didn't love me back. And I couldn't pretend that that didn't hurt. But when you walked away from me, from our friendship, and never looked back, not even for a second, I didn't understand any of it. And the thing is, Al, maybe I was once looking to understand it but I'm not anymore. So just go. Leave me alone. Take your apology and do what you do best and walk away."

Scorpius tried shutting the door in his former friend's face and he might have succeeded if it were not for Albus' next words.

"_Rose did love you_, _Scorpius_."

It was said in a frantic and desperate manner and Scorpius almost ignored it. Almost.

With the slightest amount of hesitation, Scorpius opened the door and said, "That's all you got out of everything I just said?"

"No," he spoke hastily, "I got out a lot more than that but there's nothing I can do or say to make the rest of it untrue. You were right about all of it. I wasn't thinking about you at all, I was thinking about myself. But there was one thing you said that wasn't right. Because Rose did love you. So much. It took her ten months and a single song to figure it out but she eventually did. It surprised her, confused her even, but she couldn't deny it anymore. She couldn't avoid it anymore. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was in love with you."

Scorpius gaped at the other man, confused and shocked at the words he was hearing. "You're lying," he choked out.

Albus shook his head. "I'm not. And she wanted to tell you, too. She went to your apartment, to say all the things you deserved to hear. Only you were gone. You had left for America just one week earlier. She was too late. _By one week, she was too late_."

More shock and more confusion. "She…" Scorpius trailed off with a hesitant frown. "She came looking for me?"

Albus nodded again.

Silence fell over the two of them as Scorpius let the unexpected declaration sink in, a world of emotions suddenly swirling around in his fragile heart. But when it finally did, when his heart finally caught up to his head, he realized that it no longer mattered.

It might have taken ten months for her heart to catch up with her head but it was in the past, much like they were.

"That was a long time ago" was all he could think of to say.

He was surprised, and slightly dismayed, when Albus let out a soft laugh. "Funny, that's what she said, too."

Scorpius didn't know exactly what that was supposed to mean but he realized he didn't particularly care either. "I appreciate you telling me all this," Scorpius muttered, the anger he had previously felt towards Albus all but faded into indifference, "But it doesn't change anything."

Scorpius finally turned around, to shut the door behind him, but that didn't stop Albus from getting one last word in.

"If you ask me, it changes everything."

Scorpius pretended not to hear him.

But they both knew he did.

And Scorpius would be lying if he said he didn't spend a good part of the next year thinking about what might have happened, what could have happened, if he had been standing at that door the day that Rose had knocked on it.


	3. How It All Stayed Apart

**LOOK TO THE STARS**

By ByeByeBirdie

Chapter 3: How It All Stayed Apart

* * *

Christmas was approaching and Rose and Chad were trying to balance their crazy schedule with her usual tradition of spending it with her family. They had been asked to play for some of the biggest holiday events in the country on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day but Rose flat-out refused every time.

"You really love your family," Chad said with a smile when she told Phillippe it was in his better interest to stop even suggesting Christmas concerts.

She shrugged. "Christmas is the one tradition I will never give up, not for all the money in the world," she explained. "I don't see my family very often anymore. I'm always on the road or in the studio or doing my latest promotion. But I won't work on Christmas. Not a single person in my family has ever missed a Christmas and I refuse to be the first."

Chad smiled and kissed her. "It's a good thing I love your family as much as you do then," he teased. Glancing back over at Phillippe, he shrugged and said, "Sorry, Phil, count us out."

"But-"

"No 'buts,'" Rose said firmly. "Christmas is for family. Go be with your own family, Phillippe."

"I have no family," he groaned. "This studio _is _my family."

Rose paused. "Are you looking for an invitation to the big Potter-Weasley Christmas Eve Feast because you are more than welcome-"

"I don't want to join your family for the holidays, Weasley," he growled. "I want you to use that beautiful voice of yours to wow thousands of people who will be under the influence of holiday spirit and if you bring in a few thousand galleons with it, I wouldn't hate it."

Rose fought the urge to laugh. "So really you just want to make money off of me."

"Yes. Have I ever not been clear about that?"

That time, Rose did laugh. "Sorry, Phil. It's still a no from me."

He threw his hands into the air and stormed off, grumbling about getting too old for this.

"C'mon," Chad said, grabbing Rose's hand. "Let's go find some peppermint hot cocoa."

She smiled, for peppermint hot cocoa was one of her favorite things about the holiday, and the two of them wandered down the street towards the closest coffee shop. When they walked through the door, Christmas music was blaring and Rose felt herself smile like she often did when holiday cheer filled her heart with joy.

"I love this song," Chad said absentmindedly as he began to hum to "Silent Night."

They ordered their hot cocoa and took their mugs over to the corner of the coffee shop, ignoring the occasional stare they were getting from adoring fans. While Rose had grown up a mild celebrity because of who her family was, she still wasn't used to the full-blown fame she received as a successful recording artist. She could barely walk down the street without the leering stares and the finger-pointing. But she didn't mind it. It was one of the prices she was willing to pay to be able to do what she loved. And she much preferred the fame that came from being someone than just being someone's daughter.

"What's your favorite holiday song?" Rose asked her boyfriend as "Deck the Halls" came on next.

He considered the question before saying, "'O Holy Night' probably."

"Oh, I love that song!" she cooed. "So beautiful."

He nodded. "And you?"

Her initial reaction was to say "Auld Lang Syne" for that had been her favorite ever since she was a little kid. But what came out was, "'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.'"

She hadn't meant to say it but as she did, she realized it wasn't untrue. She had always enjoyed that song but had started listening to it far more since Scorpius had once told her that it had been his favorite. And at some point over the past few years, it had become her favorite, too.

She'd be lying if she didn't say that the holidays didn't often have her thinking of Scorpius, wondering what he was doing and who he was with for she knew it was never an easy time for him.

And then as quickly as she thought of him, she pushed him far from her mind where he belonged.

Christmas came and went. Chad, not close with his parents, spent it with Rose and her family, who managed to fall in love with him even more. Her mother even dared to ask her when he was going to put a ring on her finger. Rose only laughed at that for marriage was the last thing she was thinking about.

If Scorpius had thought his Christmases were weird before that year, he was sorely mistaken. Because that year he spent it with his mother, his mother's boyfriend, his father, his father's old mistress, his half-sister, and his grandparents. And while his grandparents pretended not to feel awkward about it, because pretending _is _what they did best, Scorpius realized around noon on Christmas Day that there was no pretending about it for him. For the first Christmas of his life, he felt no awkwardness at all.

Maybe, _just maybe_, the Malfoys weren't so bad after all.

His New Year's Eve was quiet, just him and Ella ringing it in at a seedy bar down the streets from where she lived. On roughly his fourth drink, on the way to a healthy buzz, it occurred to Scorpius that Ella was the only friend he had left. It should have made him feel sad but it didn't. It just made him feel grateful that she was there.

And when she kissed him at midnight, Scorpius welcomed it.

But he also felt compelled to say, "I'm not good at relationships."

She shrugged and said, "Good thing I'm not looking for a relationship then."

And so for the second time in Scorpius' life, he entered into yet another casual sex arrangement.

He was beginning to think that sex was all he was really good for.

Chad and Rose were spending New Year's Eve in the middle of Diagon Alley at the annual New Year's Eve Village Extravaganza. They were there with other musical groups, providing the soundtrack of the evening. Rose debuted her new song, one that took far too long to write, but she felt it was appropriate to sing on New Year's Eve for it was about seizing every possible moment you had and what better message was there to send than that on the night they'd be entering into a new year.

It was nearing midnight and Rose and Chad finished their latest duet when he addressed the crowd with words that didn't seem to stun anyone but Rose.

"And I think we all know I wouldn't be the performer, or the man, I am today without this amazing woman by my side," Chad said, sending her a smile. She smiled back and he added, "Every time she opens her mouth and sings from the heart, I think I fall more and more in love with her. Here's to a New Year together, Rose, and to a lifetime of new memories."

Rose just stood there, almost frozen, as Chad told her, and the world, for the first time that he loved her. It shouldn't have come as a surprise as they had been dating for over ten months but not once had those words been said to each other.

As the clock wound down and struck midnight and the crowd around them erupted into cheers and hugs and kisses, Chad grabbed her waist and pulled her towards him. "Happy New Year, Babe," he whispered before kissing her in front of the entire crowd.

She kissed him back and the two of them launched almost immediately into a rendition of "Auld Lang Syne," but it was as if Rose wasn't even there, too lost in her own head to be anywhere else.

When the set ended and they said their thanks to the crowd and ultimately their goodbyes, they climbed off the stage hand-in-hand.

"Merlin, was that exhilarating!" Chad spoke, a grin taking over his entire expression. "The crowd loved it. I wouldn't say no to doing this again next-"

"Did you mean it?" Rose blurted out.

Chad blinked in surprise at the interruption. "Er…did I mean what?"

"What you said on stage," she spoke hastily.

His eyebrow went up. "I said a lot of things on stage."

She frowned and pulled her scarf tighter around her neck, the awkwardness bubbling around in her stomach.

"Rose," he pushed, confused, "What did I say on stage?"

She pressed her chapped lips together in a timid way before saying, "That you loved me."

He still looked confused, but only for a moment, until it dawned on him what she was saying. "Oh," he said with a sheepish chuckle. And then the chuckle was gone and there was a seriousness in his eyes as he continued. "Yeah, Rose, I meant it. I do love you. I think I've probably loved you from the moment I heard you sing 'Look to the Stars' for the first time."

She looked even more alarmed by that confession. "We weren't even dating at that point."

He shrugged. "You were still hung up on your ex, or whatever he was," he spoke softly. "I wasn't looking to be second best to you."

She frowned. "So…" she trailed off hesitantly, "What changed?"

He looked at her, all bundled up with her faux fur coat and her hand-knitted scarf and her white snow hat that was striking against her beautiful red hair, and he said, "You did."

She blinked. "I did?"

He nodded. "There was a night we sang that song to a crowd in Wilcox and you started tearing up during it, getting unexpected emotional, and it was incredibly beautiful but also sad because I could see the heartbreak in your eyes, and when we got backstage and I asked if you were okay, you told me that that it was just your way of saying goodbye to him. And after that, you became a different person. You weren't so sad and cynical all the time. You smiled more. You became a more upbeat version of yourself and I knew that that goodbye had been real. So I kissed you on Valentine's Day because I had been wanting to do that for a really long time and that night seemed like a better night than any."

She wasn't sure what to think or feel, knowing that nothing he was saying was untrue and yet all of it seemed slightly overwhelming. Expressing her feelings, even just recognizing them, had always been difficult for her. So it never occurred to her to think about her feelings for Chad. She had always just loved being with him and that had been enough. But now that love was on the table, Rose couldn't just ignore it. Nor did she particularly want to.

She thought back to their time together, ten months of almost pure bliss. She had found happiness in him, and in herself, during that time. He had become her confidante, her best friend, her lover, and her partner almost overnight. They took the world by storm and they did it together and she couldn't imagine anyone else standing beside her as she accomplished all of her dreams.

Except for maybe Scorpius.

That thought had trickled into the back of Rose's mind almost unexpectedly, and she was dismayed at the timing of it for why was it minutes after Chad professed his love to her that thoughts of Scorpius came to mind. It felt wrong and yet she couldn't help but remind herself that she wouldn't be anywhere in the music industry if it hadn't been for Scorpius pushing her towards it.

But he was just a guy who had once believed in her.

Chad was the guy who believed in her now.

And she wasn't looking to live in the past.

She had lost Scorpius because she hadn't been willing to see, or admit, what was right in front of her. She was not going to allow herself to make the same mistake with Chad.

And so she wrapped her arms around Chad's shoulders and drew him into her with a smile before saying, "I love you, too, Chad."

And they sealed it with a kiss.

Rose stayed up all night writing a song about what it meant to be in love as thoughts of Chad flooded her mind.

But so, too, did thoughts of Scorpius.

She ignored them.

Or at least she pretended to.

She finished the song in record time, putting the finishing touches on it during the fourth hour and titling it "Love is Love."

And when she woke Chad up at seven in the morning to share it with him, she told him he was the inspiration behind it. Which wasn't a lie.

But it wasn't the complete truth either.

With her writer's block gone, or at least put on hold, she returned to the studio to record her next album. "Love is Love" became her first huge single, making its way on to the radio by mid-June, a month before her album was to be released.

Scorpius was flirting with Ella in the Leaky Cauldron when the song came over the loudspeaker and the smile on his face unexpectedly faded as he listened to the words she sang, words about another man.

"_All I do is say the wrong things  
__My heart too afraid to speak  
__My mind a cloud of helpless rain  
__The words that form, a puzzle piece_

_But you are different, you are my forever  
__My rock, my anchor, my every endeavor  
__Magic is what magic does  
__And you're the magic that I trust_

_Because love is patient, love is kind  
__Love is love and love's not blind  
__Love's all around us, it's in the air  
__It's an open door, it's everywhere  
__It's how you see me, how I know  
__That you're the one I can't let go  
__Your smile brightens up my day  
__Our hearts entwined like a cliché  
__Love is patient, love is true  
__And loving you is what I do."_

Ella watched Scorpius grow quiet as he took in the lyrics but he barely took notice of her stare, just listening to Rose sing all the things she had once been too afraid to say to a guy that wasn't him.

"You okay?" Ella questioned when the song finally came to an end.

He didn't look at her, staring straight ahead at the mirror behind the bar. "She's never written a love song before," he murmured.

Ella wasn't sure how to respond as she nursed her drink. Eventually, she settled on, "It can't be easy having her pop up all the time around you."

No, it certainly wasn't.

"That's what I get for falling in love with a future recording artist," he muttered, taking a long swig of the beer in his hands. Days went by, sometimes even weeks, where thoughts of Rose completely escaped him and then suddenly, out of nowhere, he'd hear her songs on the radio or he'd catch a glimpse of someone's red hair or he'd find himself looking up at the sky at night and suddenly the memories of her devoured his heart in a confusing and unexpected way.

Ever since Albus told him that Rose had knocked on his old apartment door to tell him that she loved him, his thoughts of her took a different turn. Instead of their past, he thought of the future they could have had together had she just figured it out sooner but even he knew it was a fantasy. Love wasn't enough for the two of them, it never really was. While Scorpius had grown comfortable with the family he finally got to be a part of, the rest of the world still wasn't. They still saw the Malfoys for their scandals and not for the people they became after. Just because Scorpius had found pride in his name didn't mean anyone else ever would.

The world loved Rose and Chad together. They were the golden couple, destined for greatness. And not only did they love each other, they loved each other at the same time which was more than Scorpius could say about him and Rose. So perhaps Scorpius' thoughts were occasionally invaded by thoughts of Rose, of the what-ifs and the what-might-have-beens, but that's all they ever were and that's all it'd ever be.

"Alright, finish your drink and let's get the hell out of here," Ella sighed, throwing back her whisky and slamming the glass on to the bartop before jumping off the barstool.

"Where?" Scorpius asked, confused.

She smirked. "Well, I've got to do _something _to get your mind off that girl, don't I?"

He looked at her curiously, for only a moment, before a small chuckle escaped. "Oh?" he said, leaning in towards her suggestively. "And exactly how do you plan on doing that, Ella Fischer?"

She leaned in closer and whispered, "I plan on giving you the best sex you ever had, Scorpius Malfoy."

He downed the rest of his drink in nearly one gulp and said, "Oh, well would you look at that, it's time to get out of here."

She laughed and the two of them left the bar and apparated back to his place.

It wasn't the best sex he ever had.

But it was pretty damned close.

They both lay there afterward, trying to catch their breath, when Ella glanced over at him and asked a most unexpected question. "Do you not believe in relationships because of her?"

She didn't say Rose's name but Scorpius knew what she was referring to.

The question was rather loaded, and one that did not have an easy answer. So he said, "I thought you were supposed to be getting my mind off of her."

She shrugged. "I think I succeeded in that for a while," she dismissed. "And now I'm back to talking about her."

Scorpius sighed. "I don't believe in relationships because my family never let me believe in them."

That was all of 50% of the truth.

Ella stared up at the ceiling as she gathered her thoughts. "Maybe not in the past," she spoke curiously. "But they seem to be doing an okay job at it now."

She was right to say that for Scorpius hadn't ever seen his mother or his father as happy as they currently were.

"Would it make me sound like a total girl if I said she screwed me up for life?" he muttered.

Ella punched him on the shoulder. "Guys are allowed to have feelings, too."

It took a while for Scorpius to respond. "If feelings means having your heart ripped out of your chest and cut up into minuscule pieces of nothing than I think I was better off not having any feelings at all."

It was one of the saddest things Scorpius had ever said but Ella could tell he meant it.

"Heartbreak is a part of life, Scorpius," she whispered.

He glanced over at her, sensing the heaviness in her own words. "I wasn't even dating her," he sighed. "We were friends. And then suddenly…we weren't. How could a single moment cause so much heartbreak? How could losing a friend hurt that much? How can one girl hold that much power?"

Ella hesitated before saying, "It wasn't power she held, Scorpius. It was your heart."

Scorpius wondered if perhaps Rose still had it.

"Love is Love" jumped to the number two spot overnight and Rose celebrated the accomplishment with Chad. He had suggested going out to a fancy restaurant and she rejected the idea, saying that the only way to celebrate a song about love was to make love.

He laughed but certainly didn't argue.

As the two of them curled up against each other after a long marathon, he kissed her forehead and said, "You have this astonishing ability to write just about anything, Rose, y'know that? It's like the words just never stop pouring out of you."

She smiled. "You forget, I went through quite a few months of writer's block."

"And eventually, the lyrics came back to you," he reminded her. "I wish I could write like you but you just have an incredible way with words. But hey, I am totally okay being second best to you."

He was teasing and she could tell he held no actual truth to it but it made her feel almost guilty. She brushed the thought away quickly however. "Well, I can tell you one thing," she whispered, leaning into him and pressing a kiss to his bare shoulder. "To me, you will never be second best."

When he gazed at her and saw his entire future flashing right before his eyes in what could only be described as a hopeful manner, he found himself blurting out, "Marry me."

She froze, her mouth parting at the unexpected two words. "_What_?" she sputtered out.

He hadn't intended to propose at that time, though he'd be lying if he said the thought hadn't been crossing his mind lately, but now that the words were out there, he realized that he couldn't imagine taking them back. "Marry me," he whispered, stroking her cheek delicately.

And still all she did was stare at him, all thoughts and feelings suddenly lost on her.

When she said nothing, Chad tried to laugh it off. "Should I be offended that you aren't saying anything?"

"No," she hastily said, shaking her head at him. "I'm just…processing."

"Processing?"

She offered him a lopsided smile, all while pretending that she didn't immediately think back on a conversation she had had with Scorpius years earlier regarding both of their beliefs, or lack thereof, on the whole marriage concept.

"Marriage, hm?" she said mostly to fill the awkward silence.

He found himself chuckling at the tone of skepticism in her voice. "What, not the marrying type?" he teased.

She paused and told him the truth. "I'm not entirely sure what type I am, Chad."

He nodded in surprise understanding. "That's okay," he said, pressing another kiss to her forehead, his way of telling her that he wasn't offended by the unexpected direction of their conversation. "I know it always takes you a little while longer to listen to your heart than it does for me so I'm not looking for an answer right away. Just know that I want to marry you, Rose. And I hope that one day you'll want to marry me, too."

Rose had dinner with Albus the very next evening. They were in the middle of their salad course and Albus was currently gushing about her latest song when she cut him off.

"Chad proposed to me last night."

Albus' fork clattered to the plate as he stared at her with wide eyes. "How the hell have we been here for a half hour and you're only now bringing this up?" he practically screeched.

She shrugged.

His eyes migrated to her left hand, to a certain finger that appeared bare. He looked back up at her. "So you said…no?" he spoke hesitantly.

She paused herself. "No," she clarified. "But I didn't say yes."

When she didn't elaborate, Albus sighed. "Yeah, you are going to have to give me something more here."

She explained the conversation to Albus in detail and when she was done, Albus could only chuckle. "Typical Rose, liking things exactly the way they are."

Rose stared at him in slight irritation. "Where in anything I just said makes you think I'm mulling it over just because I like things the way they are?"

"It's what you didn't say," he spoke with a shrug. "And you didn't say yes."

"Uh, yeah, because maybe I'm not the marrying type," she scoffed. "Or did you not hear me say that part?"

He shrugged again. "I heard it," he spoke. "But I just think you're scared."

He was damned right she was scared. Being with Chad was somehow better than she ever could have imagined. He loved her and supported her in everything she did and she loved him because of it. But the idea of marrying him, the idea of marrying anyone and somehow setting the rest of her life in stone felt unbelievably terrifying. She was very much a live-in-the-moment kind of girl. And that live-in-the-moment kind of girl didn't know, or maybe didn't even want to know, what the future would hold.

"Well, I'm hardly going to take the opinion of someone whose longest relationship has been with a carton of milk in his refrigerator."

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them and she could see in his eyes that they were the wrong thing to say.

Albus threw his napkin down and abruptly stood up from his chair. "Before Chad, you were even too afraid to have a relationship with a carton of milk," he spoke coolly. "So maybe it's not whether you're the marrying type that's giving you pause. Maybe it's because you don't know if you actually love Chad or whether you're just with him because it's easy."

Right when Rose was about to apologize, he had to go and say something so demeaning and hurtful. So instead of an apology, she said, "Go to hell, Al."

"_Right back at ya_."

And then he left, leaving Rose to sit there alone, convincing herself that Albus had her relationship pegged all wrong.

When Rose left minutes later, it wasn't her home she returned to. She marched into the recording studio where Chad was finishing up the recording of his latest single and interrupted him mid-lyrics.

"Rose?" he said, confused. "What are you-"

"My answer is yes," she said as she stood in front of him. "I'll marry you."

Their engagement made front page news everywhere. The fans went wild, her family cried, the record label found it endearing, and paparazzi followed them anywhere they went. Everyone seemed thrilled.

Everyone except for Scorpius.

It wasn't that he wasn't happy for her.

It was that he remembered a time when neither of them believed in the idea of marriage.

Guess she found someone to change her mind.

Or so he thought.

"She didn't say yes at first."

Scorpius looked up from the potion he was brewing in shock, his mouth parting at the sight of Albus leaning up against the doorframe with crossed arms.

"What?" was all Scorpius could think of to say.

Albus stepped into the room. "He proposed the other night and Rose didn't say yes," he spoke softly. "She didn't say no but…she didn't say yes either. She told me she wasn't sure if she was the marrying type and I told her that it was because she didn't love him, she was only with him because it was easy. That night, she accepted his proposal. She's actually engaged just to spite me. Can you believe it?"

Scorpius' eyebrows narrowed. "You know what I can't believe?" he drawled, pulling the spoon out of the replenishing potion and wiping it off with a towel. "That you think I care."

Albus smirked. "Don't you?"

That was unfortunately a very good question.

When Scorpius had inadvertently overheard a pair of mediwitches gossiping about Rose and Chad getting engaged earlier that day, he had been rendered almost speechless. When he got into the lab, he went on a search for the daily paper. It did not take him long to find one at an intern's desk. He picked it up and sure enough, there it was.

**Chad Bennington and Rose Weasley: This Era's Golden Couple Engaged!**

He didn't read the article, didn't want to read all about their perfect relationship, but he read that headline over and over again until every single emotion he was feeling escaped him, leaving him completely numb to it all.

He went on with his day as if nothing was wrong, as if the girl he had once loved so fiercely wasn't going to marry her Prince Charming.

He had never been her prince and he had certainly never been charming. He had only ever been a Malfoy.

"No. I don't care," Scorpius said to Albus with a sigh. "And you know why? Because above all else, she deserves to be happy and I know that she is with Chad. So if she's happy then I'm happy for her."

"Oh, please," Albus said, rolling his eyes. "She doesn't know how to be happy."

"Her latest song says differently."

Albus smirked. "Still listening to her music, hm?"

Scorpius shot him a scathing look. "Anyone living in the wizarding world listens to her music. It's bloody everywhere."

Albus only nodded for Scorpius certainly wasn't wrong. "I can't watch her marry someone just to get back at me," he spoke softly.

"So tell her that," Scorpius muttered stubbornly.

"Oh, sure, that's a conversation that would go over real well," Albus snorted, staring at Scorpius like he had six heads.

He only shrugged. "Probably not but I'm really not sure what that has to do with me or why you're here."

Albus said nothing for a long time, looking away from his old mate's hard eyes as he tried to gather his jumbled thoughts. When he did, he said, "Because you may be the only other person in the world who knows that marrying that guy could be a total mistake."

Scorpius met the desperation in Albus' eyes and said, "I don't know her well enough to know whether it's a mistake or not."

"You do know her," Albus murmured. "You know her better than anyone. You know her even better than I do. So you know that she almost always goes after what she thinks is easy, not necessarily what she _wants_. I'm afraid this is just another example of that."

"I haven't had a real conversation with her in nearly two and a half years," Scorpius scowled, annoyed that Albus was somehow trying to stir up old feelings that he much preferred to keep buried. "So _no, _Al, I don't know her. Maybe I used to. Maybe I knew the old Rose. But I don't know her now. And maybe I never really did."

"Scorpius-"

"Don't," he said, holding up his hand. "I told you to leave me alone. So just…leave me alone."

He shut the burner off and walked away, hoping that when he returned, Albus would be gone.

He thankfully was.

But that didn't stop Scorpius from thinking about Albus' words long after he left.

Meanwhile, Albus did exactly what he told himself he wouldn't do.

He confronted Rose.

And it just so happened to be at the engagement party that their grandparents threw for Rose that Sunday afternoon.

Albus realized later that that was perhaps not the best time.

"So, you just going to avoid me all afternoon then?" Albus asked Rose when he cornered her coming out of the bathroom.

She glared at him. "Seems like a good plan to me."

She tried slipping past him but Albus wouldn't let her. "You said yes to Chad to spite me," he huffed. "Do you honestly think that that is a good reason to accept someone's marriage proposal?"

"Of course you'd make this about you," she hissed, shaking her head at him. "I said yes because we've been dating for a year and a half and marriage is the obvious next step. This had nothing to do with you, Al."

He looked at her, slightly annoyed by those words. "That's why you said yes?" he spoke flatly. "Because it's the next _step_?"

"Yes," she snapped, "Now if you excuse me, I have family that I actually want to be celebrating this-"

"And here I thought people got married because they loved each other."

Rose's fists clenched at her side and she wondered how her family would take it if she just punched her cousin in the face. "Sure, because _you're _the expert on marriage," she sneered.

"Oh, _here we go again_," Albus seethed, throwing his hands in the air. "You're right, Rose, I'm no expert on relationships but then again, neither are you."

"I never said I was," she snapped.

"Tell me," he said, ignoring her flippant comment, "Why did you agree to date Chad in the first place?"

She gaped at him. "_What_?"

"It's a simple question," he spoke matter-of-factly. "Why did you agree to go out with him?"

"What kind of question is that?" she demanded, curious as to where Albus was trying to go with this.

"An easy one," he drawled. "Or at least it should be."

She stared at him, both of their expressions filled with frustration, before she shrugged and said, "He asked me out, I said yes. I had no reason not to."

Albus' right eyebrow slowly inched upward. "Because you had no reason not to," he repeated before slowly shaking his head. "Y'know, most people would have said 'because I liked him' or 'because I had feelings for him.' And you go with '_because I had no reason not to_?'"

"I didn't know I liked him at the time," she spoke stubbornly. "He liked me, he kissed me, and I couldn't think of a single reason not to go out with him, so I did and I'm glad I did because I eventually fell in love with him."

Rose's frustration grew to a point of overpowering when Albus looked at her and laughed. "Good Godric, is everything so methodical with you all the bloody time?" he cackled. "You started dating him because you had no reason not to. You said yes to his proposal because it's the next step. Oh, I can't wait to see what you're going to say when he suggests having kids."

Rose paled at that thought. "Y'know what, Al?" she practically barked, her eyes blazing with an intense anger. "You're supposed to be my cousin and my friend but you aren't much of either right now. But then again, why should I be surprised since being mad at me for doing relationships my way is something you're apparently an expert in."

She tried walking away again, and that time she almost made it, but Albus' next words kept her from continuing.

"Bringing up Scorpius at your own engagement party, hm? I'd like to think that means something."

She froze, the anger she felt now bordering on uncontrollable rage. And it was that rage that she blamed for what she did next.

She hexed him.

Cursing him with a full body bind, Albus barely had time to cry out before his limbs snapped together and he fell backwards.

"Rose, _what the hell_?"

She turned around, seething, to see James standing there with his mouth hanging open. "He fucking deserved it," she sneered before turning on her heel and storming off.

Her parents didn't see it that way and neither did Albus'. She was reprimanded and given a stern talking to, most of which she ignored, and her mother demanded to know why she and Albus were fighting.

She decided to go with the truth.

"Because he's an arsehole."

Well, it was the summarized version of the truth anyway.

Chad had asked Rose what Albus had said or done but she refused to tell him. He didn't give up though, reminding her that Albus was her best friend.

"No," Rose spoke stubbornly and a small amount of sadness trickled in. "He's not my best friend. He's too busy judging me to be a friend."

That appeared to be news to Chad. "What do you mean?"

She couldn't tell him and moreover, she didn't want to.

"It means some people just don't make good friends."

And she left it at that.

Rose was still seething the next evening when she met up with Molly for a drink at the Leaky Cauldron. She had been married for nearly two years and while everyone in the family was wondering when she was going to pop out a child, Molly seemed content letting herself enjoy married life a little while longer before inviting the responsibilities of raising a kid into it.

"Do you have a color palette? A date? Venue?" Molly listed off. "Do you even have a budget? Or a-"

"I don't even have a ring," Rose interrupted with a nervous chuckle.

Molly blinked, her eyes migrating towards her cousin's hand. "Oh my God," she said breathlessly. "You don't even have a ring."

"Yes, I know. I just said that."

"But...why? How? Are you sure you're really engaged?"

Rose laughed. "He asked on a whim. Don't worry, we're going ring shopping this week."

Molly let out a squeal. "Oh, that's so exciting!" she gushed. "I can't believe Rose Weasley is engaged. I never thought this day would come, I don't think anyone did, and yet here we are-"

"What do you mean you never thought this day would come?" Rose interrupted.

Molly hesitated before offering her an awkward shrug. "You just aren't the lovey-dovey, romantic type, that's all. You've always been very work and career-focused, which is fine. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But you just always put the idea of love and relationships second. Chad was a welcome surprise as it was and then suddenly, the fiercely independent Rose Weasley who doesn't deal well with change announces that she's getting married. We're all very happy about it but it did come as a surprise."

Rose wasn't sure why those words bothered her but they did. "I'm getting a bit tired of everyone questioning my relationship with Chad," she scowled.

Confusion settled into Molly's gaze. "What are you talking about? I'm not questioning it at all. I'm just saying it was unexpected," she argued. "Who's questioning it?"

"No one," she responded a little too quickly.

Molly's eyebrow inched upward. "Does this have anything to do with why you hexed Al yesterday?"

"No," she lied.

Molly sighed. "What did he say to you?"

"Nothing," Rose muttered as she quickly finished off her butterbeer and jumped off the barstool. "I'm late meeting Chad. I'll-"

"Rose, you can't hate Al for trying to look out for you," Molly spoke quietly. "It's what he's always done."

"I don't hate Al for looking out for me. I hate him for _judging _me," she growled before turning on her heel and storming out of the pub.

And it was just her luck that she happened to run smack into one of the last people she expected to see.

"Whoa, slow down there."

Rose froze as she met the hard gaze of Scorpius Malfoy, his arm linked together with that of Ella's. "Scorpius," she said awkwardly, her eyes trailing to the petite brunette beside him. "Er…Ella, right?"

She smiled. "That's a good memory you got there."

Rose tried to look anywhere but at their hooked arms. "How are you?" she asked just to make an awkward moment even more awkward.

Neither of the two spoke, Ella glancing up at Scorpius for guidance and Scorpius just staring at Rose with a look that Rose found impossible to read. "Seems like that question is better directed at you," he spoke, his voice far from lighthearted. "I hear congratulations are in order."

Rose stiffened, turning away from the skepticism in Scorpius' gaze. "Yeah" was all she could think of to say. "Thanks."

Scorpius glanced down at her empty left hand. "No ring?"

She stiffened. "It's getting resized."

She didn't know why she lied except that the idea of telling Scorpius that there currently was no ring made her feel uncomfortable and uneasy.

If Scorpius picked up on the lie, he didn't comment on it. "We should get going," he said, glancing over at Ella with a smile who smiled back and nodded.

Rose nodded, too, and they all started to go their separate ways until Scorpius found himself needing to just say one thing more.

"Rose?" he called after her

She turned around. "Yeah?"

"I told you once that you'd make a beautiful bride," he spoke hesitantly. "I meant it then and...I mean it now."

She froze at the unexpected compliment and slowly met the genuine sincerity in his eyes. "Thank you, Scorpius," she spoke softly.

He just offered her a curt smile before disappearing down the cobblestone streets.

And Rose watched him go, wondering what was going on between him and his coworker.

Or why she even cared.

Rose finally did get that ring. Chad had insisted on buying her one of the more expensive rings in the jewelry shop and while she found it stunning, she had also felt more of a connection with the less flashy rings, those that seemed to hold far more sentiment in their look than garishness. But the expensive rings made Chad's eyes light up and she loved how happy they made him. And since she wasn't one to swoon over jewelry, she said yes to the ring that he clearly adored.

Over the next few months, she threw herself into wedding plans while Scorpius threw himself into shagging Ella. They both fell into a comfortable routine without even realizing it. But what they didn't know was that it was all about to change.

Autumn came and with it, the beginning of a new Quidditch season. Rose was in the recording studio watching Chad finish his latest song when Philippe came barreling into the room waving a piece of paper around. Scanning the room, his eyes sought out Rose and he said, "It's your cousin, James. There's been an accident."

Rose had never left a building so fast before, apparating to St. Mungo's and tearing through the hallways until she saw a familiar face.

And it just had to be Albus who she saw first.

She hadn't spoken a single word to him in nearly three months but the anger she had once felt was gone with just one look at her mourning cousin. She had never seen Albus so pale, so ashen before, his eyes swollen and vacant and his cheeks nearly hollow. Rose hadn't seen Albus cry much, maybe once or twice in his lifetime, but it was clear now that he was in some serious pain.

"Al?" Rose spoke softly as she came up beside him.

Albus' head swiveled upwards, his expression void of any emotion. He just looked at his cousin, almost seeing right through her, before he swiftly shook his head and glanced back down with a sad sigh. "He's around the corner. In room 301B" was all he said.

"Al-"

"Go."

She felt guilt burrowing away at her heart and she hesitated, wondering if staying beside Albus was where she belonged.

"_Go, Rose_," he pleaded when she didn't move.

And so reluctantly, she continued down the hallway and turned the corner, greeted by a flurry of red hair. She scanned the crowd of familiar faces until she settled on her brother.

"Hugo," she murmured and he looked up. "What happened?"

It took a few deep breaths before Hugo could speak. "Bludger to the spine," he murmured. "He fell fifty feet off his broom. It's not good, Rose."

Her face drained of all color for she had always believed that James, like the rest of her family, was invincible.

She felt the tears well up in her eyes but she blinked them back. "Is he..." she trailed off, not even sure how to finish that question.

"He's alive," he murmured. "But he's not conscious."

A tear escaped. "Can we see him?"

Panic settled into her brother's expression, an emotion Rose was not expecting. "Uh…well…" he trailed off, cringing.

Her face grew white. "What is it?"

Hugo looked around, clearly hoping for some kind of easy out from answering the question but no one was paying attention to the two of them. With a sigh, he glanced back up at his older sister and said, "Malfoy's in his room right now."

Rose froze, wrapping her mind around those words before saying, "_What_?"

"He heard James' name over the hospital intercom and came down to make sure everything was okay. He and Albus were the first ones at his bedside before word got out to the rest of us."

Rose winced. "Well, that couldn't have been pretty," she muttered for she knew Scorpius and Albus were very much estranged. Shaking that thought aside, she said, "The rest of the family is here now. He can probably go."

"He could except Uncle Harry is grilling him on James' potion regime."

Rose sighed and fell into one of the plastic seats lining the wall. "Well, then, I'll just say out here until he does leave," he murmured.

Hugo glanced at her hesitantly before blurting out, "What _happened _between you two?"

Rose sometimes forgot that there were only four people in the world who knew that it was more than just a friendship she shared with Scorpius, and Hugo wasn't one of them.

"It was a long time ago," she deflected.

Hugo just sighed.

The waiting room became invested with a flurry of concerned Weasleys and Potters and their family friends. Chad showed up at one point and only then did Rose realize she had hightailed it out of the studio without even telling him where she was going. But he didn't seem to mind and she was just grateful that he was there now to hold her hand and tell her everything was going to be okay.

She just hoped he was right.

After a great deal of tests, the Healers said they were optimistic much to the family's relief, but James' spine had been severely damaged and would take a long time to fully heal. There was a chance his Quidditch days were over and Rose could only imagine how that would make her older cousin feel for Quidditch was pretty much his life.

Then again, if not playing Quidditch was the price to pay for being alive, she didn't really care how he'd take it.

Her Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny were still in the room with James when a sprightly redhead, their daughter Lily, came barreling out of the room a few hours later and skidded into the waiting room. "He's awake!" she announced.

Brief expressions of shock were the immediate response, followed quickly by thunderous footsteps as they all made a mad dash towards James' room. In the frenzy, Rose had forgotten that Scorpius hadn't yet left the room until she wandered in behind her father and there was Scorpius in the corner of the room chatting quietly with her uncle. She caught his eye and they looked at each other for a brief moment before Scorpius turned away.

"Whoa, that's a lot of red. So much red!" James giggled. "Like a lopsided rainbow."

He actually giggled.

"He's on a ton of pain potions at the moment," Aunt Ginny spoke bashfully. "He's a bit, uh, well he's…"

"Loopy," Uncle Harry chimed in with a chuckle.

"I was going to say completely and utterly high," Ginny said with a shrug. "But sure, let's go with loopy."

That had them all laughing, including James, who quickly said, "Loopy. Hah. That's a funny word."

More laughter fell from their lips as Rose's mother asked her nephew how he was feeling.

"Great. Better than great. What's better than great. Good? No, wait, that's less than great. Excellent? Yeah, that's what I am. Excellent," he babbled.

"He's mad," Hugo whispered to Rose, holding back a laugh. "I love it."

Rose laughed again which had James pouting. "I feel like you are all laughing at me. I don't like it. No one laughs at the great Pames Jotter," he whined. Hesitating, he said, "Wait, that wasn't right."

More laughter followed.

"For the record, we are all so calling him Pames Jotter the moment he gets released from this place," smirked Rose's cousin and James' best friend, Fred.

There was a murmur of agreement from the rest of the cousins but Rose barely took notice for she saw out of the corner of her eye Scorpius move towards the door.

Evidently, James saw him, too.

"Oh, the Malfoy boy!" he spoke giddily. Perhaps a bit too giddily.

Scorpius froze as all eyes swiveled in his direction.

"Redheads, get this: _he isn't so bad_," James continued and only Rose saw the bright red blush that appeared on Scorpius' face. "I mean, really, who saw that coming? Well, I guess Al did. And Rose. Oh! You can go back to shagging him if you want, Rosie. I promise not to say anything bad about it this time."

The equal looks of horror on Rose and Scorpius' faces were nothing compared to the looks on her entire family's faces.

So much for only four people in the entire world knowing about their more-than-platonic relationship.

The silence was lethal, a flurry of dropped jaws and tense shoulders and wide eyes intensifying the awkward moment. Rose squeezed her eyes shut with a groan and Scorpius suddenly found an interest in the tile floor, both of them quite aware that everyone was staring at them.

It was Rose's father who spoke first, his voice rough and hoarse at the same time. "You were doing what now?" he spoke rather dryly, his eyes settling on his daughter.

Rose reluctantly opened her eyes to look squeamishly at her father but apparently she had lost the ability to speak.

James hadn't though.

"Oh, yeah, they were knocking boots for a while," he chuckled. "That's a funny phrase. 'Knocking boots.' Wonder where it came-"

"Okay, I think you've done enough, James," Aunt Ginny hushed her son with a sigh.

"May I speak to you in the hallway, Rose?" her father hissed, the frustration evident on his face.

"It was a long time ago, Dad," Rose muttered irritably. "It was stupid really."

Those words were like knives to Scorpius' heart.

Though he didn't blame her for downplaying it.

Actually, he appreciated it. Maybe her father wouldn't sneak into his house one night and kill him in his sleep if he thought it was nothing.

Oh, hell, her father totally still would.

"You're damned right it was stupid," her father seethed. "With a _Malfoy_? C'mon, you can do better than that."

"_Ron_," Rose's mother hissed but James cut her off.

"Oy, I already said he wasn't so bad!" James groaned and his mother gave him a pleading look, one that told him to shut up.

"Don't worry, Dad," Rose seethed, "Your precious daughter is marrying the perfect, uncorrupt son-in-law who can do no wrong in your eyes so I hardly think it's appropriate to go badmouthing Scorpius right now."

"It's always appropriate to badmouth Malfoy," her father muttered.

"_Dad_," Rose pleaded but she was cut off.

"Why, because you hated his father thirty years ago?"

They were all shocked to discover the rather scathing response came from noneother than Albus, who had been quiet up to that point.

"Go ahead and hate his father, Uncle Ron," Albus snapped. "But Scorpius doesn't deserve to be treated like that. He didn't do a goddamned thing to deserve your, or anyone's, disrespect. We're supposed to be a family of heroes and role models but what kind of example is it for you to show the world that we can be just as judgmental as those who were on the wrong side of the war? Scorpius and his family aren't out there telling the world that what they once did was right or just by any means. They already have to live with their mistakes, which they hold themselves accountable for, so why are we out here so desperate to remind them of their past faults? Maybe what happened thirty years ago was wrong but right now the only person I see in the wrong is you, Uncle Ron."

The room was silent, full of awkward and embarrassed individuals all staring at their feet so that they didn't have to look at each other. Hearts were beating loudly, the tension thick, as the silence dragged on for possibly longer than necessary. But no one knew what they were supposed to say so they said nothing at all.

Until Ron finally broke the silence. "You know what, Al?" he said softly and he looked at his nephew, but only for a moment, before he looked over at Scorpius who looked the most uncomfortable of them all. "You are right. I am a stubborn man and I know how to hold grudges. And maybe I still hold one against Scorpius' father but that does not give me the right to take it out on his son. So I'm sorry, Scorpius. You deserve better."

Nearly everyone's heads jerked up towards the tall redhead for it was unlike Ron to admit defeat, but his words sounded sincere and the regretful look in his eye told them all that he was.

"But," Ron continued, his voice now gruff, "Touch my daughter ever again and I will have to kill you. That is a father's right."

"_Ron_" groaned half the room.

Rose, however, made the rather cringeworthy mistake of saying, "Oh for Merlin's sake, Dad, I'm a grown woman. Do you plan to kill Chad, too? Because newsflash, Dad, this is the twenty-first century so if you were hoping that Chad and I were saving ourselves for marriage, you are so very mistaken."

She forgot Chad was in the room until he groaned and said, "Well, was _that_ necessary?"

Ron's eyes turned dark as he sought out his future son-in-law. "Oh, you better _run, _Bennington!"

And that was how Ron chased Rose's fiancé through the St. Mungo's hallways.

It was a story they would tell for years to come, one they would all look back on and laugh hysterically at, but in that moment, all Rose could do was sigh and say to her mother, "If he kills my fiancé, I'm killing him right back."

Her mother wrapped her arm around Rose's shoulder and said, "If he kills your fiancé, I'll help you bury the body."

And while the rest of the room erupted into laughter, she just kissed the top of her daughter's head and it was as if the awkwardness that had filled the room just moments earlier was suddenly gone.

Well, most of it anyway.

Rose met Scorpius' gaze, whose face was still a deep crimson, and she opened her mouth to say something but nothing seemed good enough. So she just shrugged and mouthed "I'm sorry" to him. Scorpius didn't say anything, just looked at her for a good long minute before nodding and leaving the room.

Albus watched the exchange and then watched Scorpius leave and when he did, it was him that Rose set her sights on next. With a smile, she strolled up to him and embraced him tightly. Albus looked surprised but embraced her back. "Thank you for standing up to my dad," she whispered into his ear.

When they pulled back, Albus looked at her. "Well, someone had to do it."

Rose wasn't offended by that. "I was too busy feeling mortified that James just told our entire family that I wasn't nearly as innocent as they thought."

Albus' head cocked to the side. "That's cute that you assume any of us ever thought you were innocent."

He yelped as her hand came to smack him in the back of his head.

She just grinned at him and he couldn't help but grin back.

The family trickled out one by one, most of the cousins ribbing on Rose for apparently having an unexpected sex life, and Albus stayed back to chat with some of the Healers about James. When he was satisfied that his brother would heal, maybe not right away but eventually, Albus weaved his way through the busy building and made his way downstairs into the potions laboratories.

When he walked in, it was Scorpius who spoke first. "You didn't have to do that."

"Yeah, I did," Albus said with a shrug.

Scorpius looked up from his lab report. "I don't get a lot of people in my life standing up for me."

Albus gave him a lopsided smile. "You got me."

Scorpius frowned. "But for a long time, I didn't."

Albus' heart sank at those bluntly honest words. "I know," he sighed. "I'm sorry, Scorpius. Looking back, I don't even really know why I got so mad. I just wanted better for both you and Rose. She can be a little indifferent when it comes to relationships and you can be a little closed off. I just felt like that had disaster written all over it."

Scorpius turned away with a sigh. "Well, it's not like you weren't wrong about that."

"I was though," Albus insisted. "Because whatever you two were doing, it had nothing to do with me. It was between you two. But I let my own personal feelings cloud my judgment. I think maybe a part of me wasn't just afraid that you'd wind up hurting my cousin or that she'd wind up hurting you, I was afraid it'd end up hurting me somehow. I thought that if and when it backfired, I'd wind up in the middle of it all and I didn't want that for you or for Rose and I especialyl didn't want that for me. So I took myself out of the situation. Which I've regretted every day since. Maybe I was allowed to be a little upset and angry. But I never should have ended our friendship over it."

Scorpius met the remorse in Albus' gaze and as he stared at his old friend, he was reminded of all the laughs they had shared when they were younger. All the times they stayed up late to talk about girls and the all-nighters they helped pull before exams. He was reminded of their shared time on the Quidditch pitch and the times that Albus stood up for Scorpius when others would call him a Death Eater's son. He thought of all the times they traveled into Hogsmeade together and the butterbeers they shared and the chocolate frogs they split. He recalled the first time Albus told him he wanted to be a Healer when he was only thirteen and the first time Scorpius told Albus he wanted to do something with potions.

Scorpius had been so hurt that Albus had been able to just cast that all aside in a single moment.

But now it was Scorpius' turn to decide if he wanted to cast it aside.

And even as he contemplated the question, he knew he didn't.

He didn't have a lot of friends in his life and the truth was, the undeniable truth that Scorpius had been ignoring for years, was that he missed Albus.

And so Scorpius looked up at Albus with a smile and said, "Who said our friendship was over?"

Albus had never felt such relief as he grinned at Scorpius and Scorpius grinned back.

"Oh, and just for the record," Scorpius added with a single shrug, "Your family is bloody bonkers."

Albus looked at him and burst into laughter. "I've been telling you that for years, mate."

Mate.

It had a nice ring to it.

When Rose got home that evening, Chad was at her apartment waiting for her. She walked into her kitchen with a giggle, reaching up to frame Chad's face with her hands and kiss him. "Hey, remember when I used to tell you that my father was crazy and you never believed me?"

He planted a kiss on her nose. "Oh, I believe you now."

Rose let out a barking laugh before kissing him again. "In hindsight, telling him that we were shagging each other might not have been my best idea."

Chad took a step back. "Hm, you think?" he spoke with a smirk and he strode over to the pantry to pull out a box of spaghetti and pasta sauce.

They were in the middle of making dinner, when he asked the question Rose had been waiting for.

"So that was Scorpius, hm?"

Rose tensed, staring at the sauce she as currently stirring. "That was Scorpius."

There was a long pause before Chad spoke up again. "His family has been in the papers a lot, right?" he mused. "That's the family who supported Voldemort back in the day but got pardoned on all charges?"

Rose nodded. "His family's past is a complicated one."

"Your dad certainly seems to think so."

She cringed. "My father went to school with Scorpius' father and boy, does Dad know how to hold a grudge."

Chad nodded almost mechanically as his thoughts took over once again. "He was the guy we ran into when we were in Diagon Alley last Easter, wasn't he."

Rose had nearly forgotten all about that until Chad brought it up again. "Oh," she said, surprised. "Uh, yeah, he was."

Chad poured himself another glass of wine. "Why didn't you just say that at the time?"

Rose wasn't sure what the best response was supposed to be so she just said, "I didn't think I'd ever see him again."

Based on the scoff that fell from Chad's lips, Rose had a feeling that was not the right response. "So you were actively trying to hide him from me? Why?"

"_No_," Rose groaned, shaking her head. "I was just taken aback at the time. You and I had only just started dating and I didn't want to make things weird and I honestly just wanted to keep him in my past. I should have told you. I just…I didn't know how."

Chad took a sip of his wine, studying the guilt on his fiancée's face. "Have you seen him at all between last Easter and now?"

She swiftly shook her head but stopped when she realized that she had run into him once, albeit briefly. "Once," she murmured. "I ran into him a few days after we got engaged."

Chad's lips pursed. "Oh?"

"It was nothing," she assured him. "The conversation lasted all of two minutes before we went off in our separate directions. He really is just a part of my past, Chad. He doesn't mean anything to me."

"But he did once," Chad spoke softly. "And you never talk about him."

"What do you want me to say about him?" she practically pleaded, this conversation hardly one she wanted to be a part of. "We never actually dated. We were just friends."

Chad snorted.

"Okay, fine a little more than friends," she muttered sheepishly. "But we aren't anymore."

"What happened?"

She had been hoping to avoid that question. She let out a soft sigh as she tried to collect her thoughts. "He developed feelings for me," she murmured. "And I didn't feel the same."

He stared into his glass of wine. "Except that you did."

She sighed again. "Yeah, but I didn't know it at the time. And by the time I figured it out, we were long over. The timing was never right for us. Honestly, nothing was ever right for us. Being friends always made sense. Being anything more wouldn't have."

He said nothing, looking at her in pensive curiosity. "Don't hate me for asking this but are you over him?"

Rose stared at him, shocked. "Of course I am!" she demanded. "I love _you_, Chad. I'm marrying _you_. And he's dating someone new himself so whatever we once were is completely irrelevant now."

Chad looked at her curiously. "How do you know he's dating someone new?"

She shrugged. "Because he was with her when I ran into them last December."

That seemed to soften the blow for Chad, who nodded slowly. "So," he said with a forced smile, "Am I assuming correctly that before today, no one in your family knew about you two?"

Rose's face turned a light shade of pink. "Besides James and Albus, that would be a correct assumption," she muttered. "I'm thinking my family probably thinks I'm a whore right about now."

Chad considered her comment before shrugging and saying, "Hey, as long as you're my whore."

She looked up at him in slight surprise but was met with a teasing grin. With a roll of the eyes, she pointed the spoon at him. "Oh, sure, mock the girl who has the ability to throw marinara sauce in your face. That seems like a good idea."

He laughed and leaned over to press his lips to hers. "In case I don't say it enough," he murmured, brushing a hair from her face, "I love you."

She smiled at him, grateful that that seemed to be the end of the conversation, and said, "I love you, too."

Rose wasn't naïve to think that her cousins would just drop the subject of her past relationship with Scorpius so she was hardly surprised when she got ambushed by a handful of them the next evening.

There was a fury of knocks and when she opened the door, there stood Molly, Hugo, Lily, and Albus.

"I tried to stop them," Albus said with a sigh as the other three quickly whisked past Rose.

Rose gave him a look. "You didn't try very hard."

"No, I didn't," he chuckled.

"I _cannot _believe you didn't tell me that you were fooling around with Scorpius when you two were friends," Molly huffed as she paced the floor.

"They were apparently a lot more than friends," Lily smirked.

"We really weren't," Rose tried arguing but she was cut off by a loud laugh from Albus.

"Except for the part where you fell in love with him."

Simultaneous gasps of surprise fell from the other three and Rose glared at Albus. "Was that really necessary?"

He just grinned.

"Is that why you two parted ways?" Hugo asked his sister. "Because you fell for him and he didn't feel the same way?"

Rose met the knowing gaze of Albus, whose grin had quickly faded into an apologetic frown. "No," she muttered before glancing back at her curious brother. "Quite the opposite actually."

When she said nothing more, Albus filled them in, explaining that Scorpius was the one who fell first and it took Rose ten months to figure out that she loved him, too.

"Well, that's not a surprise," Molly chuckled. "Rose isn't exactly the most welcoming of change."

"That's not true!" she scowled even though she knew Molly wasn't completely wrong.

"You're certainly more open to change now," Molly admitted with a shrug. "But you used to be a pro at running from it."

Those words had Rose wondering what had happened in her life to suddenly make her less afraid of change. And then she wished she hadn't wondered because she knew exactly what it had been.

Correction: she knew exactly who it had been.

Ever since things went sour with Scorpius, Rose had been trying to do everything she could to be a better person with Chad than she ever had with Scorpius. She wanted to prove to herself that she was better off without him. That she was happier with him. She made so many mistakes with Scorpius. And the last thing she wanted was to end up standing alone and heartbroken in an empty corridor as the rest of the world moved on without her.

"It was a long time ago," Rose practically pleaded, wanting to move off the subject of Scorpius. "Maybe there were some sort of feelings involved with Scorpius at one point but I love Chad now. He's the one I'm marrying. He's the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. So please, can we just drop the subject of Scorpius?"

Her brother and cousins all exchanged a hesitant look but eventually they nodded. "As long as you're happy with Chad, we're happy," Lily said with a smile.

Rose felt relief settle into her heart. "I'm happy."

They left but not before Albus stopped at the doorway and turned back towards her, a look of wariness in his eyes as he spoke. "I know I went about it the wrong way," he said softly, "But please don't marry Chad if you're just doing it to try and prove a point. Marry him because you love him."

There was a small amount of uneasiness that trickled into her heart as his pleading words but she ignored it to say, "I am, Al."

If Albus wasn't convinced, he thankfully didn't say anything except for good-bye.

Over the next few months, Rose went through another case of writer's block which was okay as she spent most of her time either planning the wedding or on the road promoting her latest album. She was busier now more than ever and she basked in its glory for happiness had always come so hard for her and now it was as if it was being handed to her on a perfectly manicured silver platter and she was trying to enjoy it as much as possible before it all came crashing down around her.

Phillippe had somehow convinced her and Chad to record a few Christmas duets together just in time for the holidays so she squeezed that into her already busy schedule. The album of five songs was released on December 1st and once again she and Chad spent the night (in bed) celebrating as they both crossed off yet another item they didn't even know they had on their bucket list.

"Seems like there's nothing you and I can't do," Chad said, his fingers instinctively stroking her right thigh.

"Except for celebrate our accomplishments outside of the bedroom," Rose giggled, resting her chin on his chest.

"If that's the only thing we can't do, I think I'm okay with that," he teased, pressing a kiss to her nose.

She laughed and leaned over to give him a proper kiss.

When they pulled away, he brushed a stray hair from her face. "Thirteen months," he whispered. "Thirteen months and we'll be husband and wife."

They had picked a date earlier that week, setting it for December 18th of the following year based on the venue's availability. It had been scary and exhilarating at the same time as they turned their engagement into something real. Chad had been thrilled, buying a bottle of champagne and toasting to December 18th. Rose had felt uneasy but she coughed it up to typical cold feet jitters and toasted him back.

"I can't believe it," Rose spoke with a forced smile before resting her head on his shoulder and letting the lyrics of their version of "Baby It's Cold Outside" take over her thoughts.

Scorpius had spent the entire Fall season wondering if there was anywhere in the wizarding world he could go to get away from Rose Weasley's name.

It seemed unlikely.

Ella made a comment at one point that he seemed down and he blamed it on work but they both knew it was so much more than that.

The two of them went out for a drink in early December and on a last-minute whim, Scorpius invited Albus, who was more than happy to finally meet the elusive Ella Fischer.

"Ah, so you're Ella," Albus greeted as he slid into the bench opposite them. "You're quite pretty."

Scorpius rolled his eyes but Ella merely grinned. "Thanks. You're not so bad on the eyes yourself, Albus Potter."

He made a face. "Just Albus."

Her eyebrow popped up. "Not a fan of your famous last name?" she teased.

He shrugged. "It's just a last name."

Scorpius couldn't help but laugh at that. "Take it from someone who knows. It's never _just _a last name," he said in jest, though they all knew there was some sincerity to what he was saying.

"Well," Albus said, clearing his throat as he raised his glass up, "Here's to first names."

"You do realize that I'm the only one here with a _normal _first name, right?" Ella teased as she clinked her glass to Albus'.

While Albus pouted, Scorpius only laughed. "Oh, c'mon, Al, you know she has a point."

"Of course she has a point," he groaned. "My name is horrible."

"At least you get a decent nickname out of it," Ella said with a shrug. "Scorp isn't much better than Scorpius."

"I'm starting to feel particularly offended," Scorpius huffed.

"Has he ever told you his middle name?" Albus smirked.

"Oy, you shush!" Scorpius groaned but Ella cut him off, her eyes growing with eagerness.

"Oooh, do tell!"

"_Don't tell_," Scorpius pleaded.

"Hyperion," Albus said with a grin.

"And he told," Scorpius muttered but his complaint was drowned out by Ella's howling laughter.

"Damn," she said when she came down from her fit of laughter, placing her hand on Scorpius' shoulder with a sad sigh, "Your parents never even gave you a chance, did they."

Scorpius sighed. "Y'know, if I knew the two of you were planning on ganging up on me, I would have kept you from meeting."

That only had the two of them pealing off into laughter again and Scorpius shook his head with what he could only describe as slight amusement.

Perhaps what happened next was his fault for daring to think that his life didn't seem so terrible anymore.

For he was finishing up his second drink when an all-too-familiar voice, and an even more familiar song, came over the radio.

"_Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
__Let your heart be light  
__From now on your troubles will be out of sight._

_Have yourself a merry little Christmas__  
__Make the Yuletide gay__  
__From now on your troubles will be miles away."_

He froze at the sound of Rose's voice harmonizing with Chad's, singing a song he had once treasured, a holiday song he had long considered theirs, with someone else. The same someone else she loved and who she was going to marry in just twelve months. A someone else she had long replaced him with.

It was the first time he could ever actually remember hating her, if even just a small amount.

"Scorpius?"

He broke out of his trance and glanced up into identical looks of concerns on his friends' faces.

"You okay?" Ella asked hesitantly.

He could have said yes but he just shook his head as the song wound down. He waited for it to be over, waited for the next song to start before he finally spoke. "That was the first song I ever heard her sing," he murmured. "She gave me a recording of it. The first, and only, recording she ever gave to me. Way before she was famous. She knew it was my favorite holiday song and she sang it for me. Gave it to me late one Christmas Eve, knowing how much I dreaded the holidays. Knowing I could use a pick-me-up. That was the night I knew something had changed between us."

It was also the night Scorpius told her that when things got too hard, he looked to the stars.

Was Rose trying to taint every single memory he ever shared with her?

"Damn," Ella murmured, letting out a low whistle, "And now she's singing it with that Chad guy? Talk about coldhearted."

"No," Scorpius muttered with a sad sigh, "She probably doesn't even know what she's doing. It might be a memory to me, but to her I'm sure it's just another holiday song."

He was wrong.

Rose knew exactly what she was doing when she recorded the song with Chad and did it anyway. She had no choice. Chad had told Phillippe that "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" had to be one of the songs on their Christmas album and while Rose had initially refused, Chad asked her, confused, why she didn't want to record a rendition of her favorite holiday song. She tried coming up with excuses but Chad could tell that's all they were and since she couldn't bring herself to tell him the truth, that that song held a lot of memories, both good and bad, all of which belonged to Scorpius Malfoy, she recorded the song because that seemed easier than fighting with Chad about it.

And when it came over the radio one night while she was in her apartment cooking dinner, the same night that Scorpius heard it out at the bar, she felt the guilt well up in her heart as she listened to a song she was singing with the wrong man.

Rose stopped listening to the radio after that.

Christmas was its familiar merry affair with the Potters-Weasleys and yet for the first time since Rose could remember, she lacked her usual holiday spirit. She put on the smile, she toasted her family, she drank the eggnog and sang the Christmas carols, and no one seemed to be any the wiser.

Except for Albus.

"Okay, out with it," he said, pulling her aside after their Christmas feast. "What's with you today?"

She pretended not to know what he was talking about. "What do you mean?"

"You're not yourself," he insisted. "You seem a bit…down."

"No," she lied. "I'm just tired. It's been a long couple of months."

He sighed. "You've had a long couple of years and I've never seen you like this. Not since…" he trailed off, cringing.

Her eyebrow popped up. "Not since what?" she demanded.

He looked at her, an awkward hesitation flickering in his green eyes. "Not since you and Scorpius stopped seeing each other."

Her heart constricted at the very mention of Scorpius for even she knew it would be a total lie to say he didn't have something to do with her current mood.

That didn't stop her from lying though.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she scoffed.

He sighed. "The thing is, I think you do."

She glared at him. "Look, just because you're friends with him again doesn't mean you know anything about us and what happ-"

"Why did you record 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' with Chad?"

She froze, staring at him in mild shock. "Uh…well, why wouldn't I?" she deflected.

"Because it's my understanding that that song has some emotional attachment with Scorpius tied to it."

She stared at him. "Did Scorpius tell you that?" she huffed for she was both surprised and a little annoyed that Scorpius was spilling their past secrets to Albus.

Albus' eyebrow slowly popped upward. "You don't deny it?"

She swiftly shook her head. "Maybe he has some emotional attachment to it, but I don't," she lied. "It's just a song."

Albus could only stare at her, recognizing the heated defiance in her defensive words. "I don't know what's worse," he murmured, "You actually believing it's just a song or you knowing it is so much more than just a song and recording it with Chad anyway."

"Why should either make a difference?" Rose pleaded, shaking her head at her cousin. "Scorpius and I haven't been anything in _years_. He has his own life and I have mine. We've moved on from whatever the hell we were doing. I'm getting married to somebody else and he's in his own relationship so why should I have to be considerate of anything from our past-"

"Whoa, hold up," Albus said, shaking his head, "What do you mean he's in his own relationship?"

Rose sighed. "Does it matter?"

Albus said, "Considering he's not dating anyone, I think it does."

She blinked. "He's not dating that coworker of his?"

Albus looked at her for only a second before breaking out into laughter. "Oh, Rose," he chuckled and then he said the most unexpected thing. "Scorpius isn't dating Ella. _I _am."

Rose's lips parted as she stared at her cousin, waiting for a punchline that never came. "_What_?" was the best response she could come up with.

He shrugged, a chuckle still spilling from the end of his lips. "I met her a few weeks ago and we've gone out a few times together. I like her. We're nothing official because let's face it, relationships have never exactly been my forte so I guess for now, we're just taking things slow and I don't know why I'm babbling about this when really, the point of me telling you any of this is to inform you that Scorpius is still very much single."

Rose felt both foolish and confused as she considered Albus' rant. "But I saw the two of them together last year and they were looking pretty cozy," she muttered.

Albus hesitated before saying sheepishly, "Ah, yeah, well, that's probably because they were sleeping together for a while there. Nothing serious. Just sex."

Rose could have been perfectly happy not knowing about that.

"Oh" was all she could think of to say.

Albus met her awkward gaze. "So, for the past year, you've been convinced he's been seeing someone else?"

She shrugged. "I guess so," she said like it made no difference to her.

(It did.)

Albus studied her, sensing a shift in the tension currently in the air. "He still hasn't gotten over what happened between you two. I don't know if he ever really will."

Rose's heart constricted at those very words, not sure what to make of them.

But she realized it didn't matter.

"It's been three years, Al," she whispered. "We've both moved on."

She walked away from him then, needing that to be the end of the conversation, but that didn't stop Albus from getting in the last word.

"But have you really?"

She pretended not to hear him.

Christmas passed rather quietly for Scorpius and for the second year in a row, he didn't find himself hating it. Both of his parents seemed happy with their separate lives and though they all came together for Christmas dinner, it was a cordial event. Even Scorpius' half-sister and her mother found it enjoyable. It should have been weird to have his divorced parents, his mother's boyfriend, his father's mistress, and his father's illegitimate child all in the same room together but it was the first time in a long time that Scorpius actually felt as if he had people in his life that he could call family.

"Any women in your life, Scorpius?" his mother asked him at the end of the evening.

He groaned. Just when he thought he might go through a family meal without someone asking him about his love life. "Nope," he said with a shrug.

"What about that nice coworker of yours?" Delilah asked, which seemed to pique the interest of the other adults.

"Aren't sisters supposed to keep their brothers' private life _private_?" he pouted.

"No, they're supposed to use their brothers' private lives against them," she teased.

He rolled his eyes. "Ella and I are just friends," he said with a shrug.

"She's pretty," Delilah said for she had met Ella one time when visiting Scorpius at work.

"Well, tell that to Albus because I'm pretty sure he's already called dibs on her."

"'Called dibs?'" his mother groaned. "She's not an object, Scorpius!"

Scorpius grinned sheepishly. "You're right, she's not. She's my friend. But if you'd like to know more about her love life, I'd suggest asking Al."

"Yes, because we converse with the Potter family so frequently," his father spoke with a chuckle.

"It was devastating when James Potter's injury retired him from Quidditch," Delilah said with a heavy sigh. "All of the girls at school cried about it. He was so fun to watch on the pitch."

"That's code for he was good-looking and they all liked to swoon over him," Delilah's mother laughed.

"_Mum_!" Delilah whimpered.

"A James Potter fan, hm?" Draco Malfoy teased with his own laugh. "I'm sure if you ask nicely enough, Scorpius would be happy to introduce you. He has an in with that family."

"Oh, I do not," Scorpius said, rolling his eyes, for even though he was friends with Albus, he made it a point to stay away from the rest of his family.

"You have an in with Rose Weasley apparently," Delilah said and at the mere mention of her, Scorpius felt his spine stiffen.

"No, I definitely don't," he muttered. "Not anymore."

She seemed wary. "I thought you two were friends back at school."

"Yeah, about a million years ago," he murmured. "We grew apart."

"Why?"

Scorpius was surprised to find out that that question came from his father and not his sister.

He met the curiosity in his father's gaze and shrugged. "People change I guess," he lied.

Or maybe the problem was that they didn't.

Scorpius was not at all surprised when his father brought this exchange up later that night when it was just the two of them in the kitchen.

"I know I never showed much approval of the Weasley girl, or of Albus Potter, but they were good for you," he said softly. "They made you happy when it seemed as if nothing else ever did. I'm sorry if I made things difficult for you when it came to your choice of friends."

Scorpius was surprised and yet appreciative that his father was finally recognizing and apologizing for his blatant faults in the past but the blunt truth was, it didn't matter anymore.

"Rose and I really did just drift apart," he muttered. "It wasn't because of you."

Scorpius realized as he spoke that he wasn't being completely honest when he said it had nothing to do with his father for at the time he had known how laughable it would have been for his father to approve or accept any sort of relationship he may have had with Rose.

Guess he dodged that bullet.

"You asked me one year right before Christmas why your mother and I got married when it was clear we didn't love each other," Draco spoke hesitantly. "I had my suspicions that you were asking because of Rose Weasley."

"I wasn't," he lied.

His father's eyes turned soft. "There isn't much of myself that I have passed on to you and for that, I am grateful for I know I haven't been a great father, or even that great of a person. And I just hope that my inability to love and be loved in return doesn't turn out to be the only thing I have passed on."

Scorpius didn't have an issue with the loving someone part.

It was the not being loved in return part that had damaged him.

And that wasn't something he could blame his father for.

"You didn't pass that on, Dad," Scorpius spoke softly as he stared into his nearly empty tea mug. "I know how to love. I just find it easier not to."

He walked out before his father could respond.

New Year's Eve had Scorpius playing the third wheel to Ella and Albus, something he found both nauseating and entertaining.

"Elle and Al," Scorpius said after his fourth champagne. "It has a nice ring to it. I shall call you Elbus from now on."

"Uh, ew, _no_," Ella scoffed.

"Call us that and die," Albus warned.

"Now, now, you can't kill the guy who introduced you two," Scorpius argued. "It would be so very wrong."

"But I can kill the guy who annoys us," Albus drawled.

"And you'd go to Azkaban and then who will Ella fall for?" Scorpius pouted.

"My father is Harry Potter. You really think I'd go to Azkaban?"

And while Ella laughed, Scorpius sighed for he had a feeling a dead Malfoy would be of little concern to the Ministry.

He only realized he said that aloud when the jesting looks on Ella and Albus' face turned grim. "That's not true, Scorpius," Ella argued, shaking her head at him.

Scorpius shrugged. "Unfortunately, it is true," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "Who needs another drink?"

"_Scorpius_," Albus pleaded but Scorpius cut him off.

"It's fine," Scorpius said with a laugh. "It's just the way our world works unfortunately. I'm used to it by now."

There was a long pause of awkward tension before Albus spoke again. "You shouldn't be."

Scorpius shrugged. "It really is fine," he insisted even though it wasn't. "Now, more drinks?"

He didn't wait for them to respond before taking off into the crowd towards the bar.

His family had come a long way since their war days. Even in the past year, their scandals seemed less pronounced. But his name would always be tainted. So maybe he was able to change James Potter and Ron Weasley's minds, or at least just educate them a bit, but there was still a world out there who wouldn't be able to turn the other cheek so easily. Nor did Scorpius ever expect them to.

And maybe that was the saddest part of all. That he had grown so accustomed to the judgment and the discrimination that he expected it from every person he ever came across. Every time he introduced himself using his last name, he felt the resentment before even they did. He waited for the narrowed eyes and the grimaces. He prepared himself for the cautious mannerisms. It had become such a way of life that it no longer surprised him. It still hurt but not as much as it used to. It became second nature to be judged on preconceived notions. And he had stopped questioning it so very long ago.

"If you're trying to get the bartender's attention, you might be waiting a while. He seems to heavily favoring the female population."

Scorpius turned to his right and offered a curt smile to the pretty blonde. "That sounded like you might be willing to help a guy out."

She shrugged coyly. "For a fee perhaps."

He chuckled and glanced down at her half-empty drink. "Firewhisky and cola?"

She grinned and then leaned over the bar, signaling to the bartender. It only took him a few seconds before he meandered her way. "Hey, doll, what can I get you?"

"The name isn't doll," she drawled. "And we'll have a champagne and a firewhisky and cola."

The bartender disappeared to fix their drinks and the girl turned back towards Scorpius to say, "So, champagne, hm? Are you always this much of a cliché?"

"Maybe I'm just cheap," he fired back. "They're having half-off deals on all champagne tonight."

"And yet you just offered to buy me a drink."

He smirked. "Maybe I have ulterior motives."

She looked at him suggestively. "Oh? And what might those be?"

He tilted his head to the side with a coy chuckle. "Well, I can't go and tell you all of my secrets up front, now can I?"

Curiosity filled her expression but before she could question it, the bartender returned at that time and handed the pair their drinks. Scorpius dug through his pocket and pulled out the necessary change before sliding it across the bar.

He grabbed his champagne flute and held it up to the blonde. "Cheers," he said with a grateful smile before turning around and heading back towards the crowd.

"That's it?"

He hesitated before turning back around to look at her incredulous expression. "I'm sorry?"

"I flag down the bartender for you, you buy me a drink, we flirt, and then you just walk away?" she said with a curious laugh. "You're not like most guys, are you."

He looked at her. Really looked at her, the smile on his face slowly fading into a defeated frown. "I know how this is going to go," he drawled. "We'll flirt, have some fun, we'll start to like each other, and then I'll tell you my name and you'll stick around for a few more minutes, just to be polite, just to make yourself feel better, and then you'll make up some excuse to slip away and I will never see you again. So I guess I'm just skipping all the in-between bullshit and going straight to the goodbyes."

The expression on the girl's face had turned into one of shock and disbelief. "Wow," she drawled, almost bitterly, "You don't think very highly of yourself, do you."

"Not many people do," he found himself blurting out.

Her one eyebrow popped upward at that blunt confession. Tilting her head to the side, she said, "Well, why don't you introduce yourself to me and we'll find out if I'm one of those people."

He wasn't looking to be proved right but he didn't know what else to say to stop the conversation altogether. So with a sigh, he said, "I'm Scorpius Malfoy."

He waited for the flinch or the frown or the surprise in her reaction.

It never came.

"Hi," she said, holding out her hand, "I'm Adrienne Goyle."

As much as he hated the shocked reactions he received every time he offered up his name, he couldn't stop himself from looking surprised at her surname.

"Goyle," he said hesitantly, slowly reaching out to shake her hand. "As in…"

"Gregory Goyle's daughter," she drawled.

He suddenly felt very foolish. "Oh."

She shrugged. "You're not the only one who's used to people reacting a certain way because of a name."

He grimaced and then sighed. "Any chance we could start this whole conversation over?" he suggested sheepishly.

She smiled at him. "Sure," she said before leaning in close to him. "How about you start with telling me what your real ulterior motives might have been for that drink you bought me."

He smirked. "Well, for one, a dance," he said hopefully. "And then maybe we'll see where the night takes us."

The night took them back to his place.

And for the first time in three years, Scorpius actually found himself looking forward to the New Year.

Rose, on the other hand, wasn't so sure.

**XOXOXO**


	4. How It All Almost Worked Out

**LOOK TO THE STARS**

By ByeByeBirdie

Chapter 4: How It All Almost Worked Out

* * *

Scorpius saw more of Adrienne over the next few weeks while Rose spent the next few weeks avoiding wedding planning by focusing on songwriting. Or at least trying to focus on songwriting. She was going through another case of writer's block, worse than ever before, but she was determined to break herself out of it. She figured if she wrote enough, the block would just disappear and all that would be left was an imagination full of inspiration.

It wasn't working all that well but she was pretending it was.

She had been dragged out for a coffee date with Albus and Molly in mid-February which she complained about but she was secretly relieved for a break from staring at the cliched words written down in her notebook in front of her.

"Flowers? Dress? Caterer? You at least have to know what kind of music you want at your wedding, Miss Singing Celebrity," Molly was gushing as the three of them dropped down into a table in the back of the coffee shop.

Rose's head was spinning. "Why would I know what I want for any of that?" she groaned. "It's not like I've planned a wedding before."

"Most girls spend a good portion of their lives planning their wedding," Molly pointed out.

Rose shot her a look. "Have I ever mistaken you for someone who was like most girls?"

"You didn't have to plan for your wedding your entire life," Albus intervened with a shrug. "You just have to plan now. And you're hardly going to be able to do that when you spend your entire time songwriting."

"Yeah, but I'm good at that," Rose whined, though that was stretching the truth at the moment. "Wedding planning, not so much."

Molly threw her hands in the air. "Merlin, at this point you might be better off eloping!"

Rose hesitated. "Am I allowed to do that?"

"_No_," Molly groaned at the same time that Albus said, "Sure!"

Molly shot a glare over at Albus. "Oy, don't go encouraging that. Grandmum would have a heart attack if she ever found out one of her grandbabies got married at some courthouse."

"Good point," Albus said with a sigh, glancing over at Rose. "You really looking to kill our grandmother over a few wedding plans?"

"Well, someone is being dramatic today," she huffed. "And could we please change the subject before I do actually consider eloping?"

There was short pause before Molly said, "Any Valentine's Day plans for you two?"

Rose had forgotten about the upcoming superficial holiday until Molly mentioned it. She had been so busy writing and Chad had been so busy in the studio that their time spent together had been somewhat lacking. Rose didn't hate it for every time she was with Chad, he always wanted insight into her writing sessions and she was embarrassed with what she was coming up with so the distance between them wasn't exactly the worst thing in the world.

"Not yet," she said absentmindedly.

"Double-dating actually," Albus said with a chuckle. "And yes, I'm aware of how unromantic that is."

"Double-dating? With _who_?" Rose questioned. "And for the love of all things magical, please do not say you are going on a double date with your brother and his latest skank. I'm fairly certain this one doesn't even have a brain."

"Actually, he's already dropped her," Albus laughed. "Figured out for himself just how dim-witted she was."

"Your brother quite possibly might have the worst taste in women."

Albus could only agree.

"So if not with James, who?" Molly prodded.

Albus' lips pursed as he stole a rather shifty look towards Rose, which did not go unnoticed by her. "What?" she asked, her brow furrowing in bewilderment.

He shrugged dismissively. "I'm going with Scorpius."

Molly also peeked at Rose out of the corner of her eye, who just shrugged as if she wasn't bothered by this news.

(She was.)

"I wasn't aware that Scorpius was a fan of the holiday," she commented.

"He's not but his new girlfriend probably is."

This time, Rose couldn't hide her surprise. She opened her mouth a few times, struggling to find the right words, before saying, "Girlfriend?"

Albus shrugged. "Well, I'm not sure exactly what they are. I just know there's a new girl in the picture."

"Oh," she said, forcing out a smile. "Well, good. I'm happy for him."

She didn't sound all that happy but neither of them commented on it.

Valentine's Day arrived and Albus was waiting impatiently on Scorpius' couch as the latter finished getting ready. "Remind me why we're doing this?" Scorpius murmured as he flattened his hair.

"Why we're doing what?"

Scorpius took one last look in the mirror before turning back to his mate. "Going on a double date on Valentine's Day of all days?"

Albus shrugged. "Less pressure than going alone?"

Scorpius seemed to like that answer. "I only met Adrienne a few weeks ago. Some would argue jumping into the Valentine's Day festivities is a bit too soon."

"_Some_ would argue?" Albus questioned. "You mean, _you_?"

Scorpius shrugged. "I don't exactly know a whole lot about relationships, Al."

"Right, and I do?" he snorted. Shaking his head, he said, "There is no need to turn tonight into anything other than an informal double date. It's not like the girl you've been casually seeing for a few weeks is expecting an I-love-you or a proposal or anything more than just dinner."

Scorpius looked queasy at the very suggestion. "C'mon," he sighed, "We've got some ladies to woo."

Albus climbed off the couch and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Do me a favor," he said, "Never use the word 'woo' again."

While Albus and Scorpius went on their double date, one that went surprisingly smoothly, Rose had wandered into her dining room from an afternoon of writing (all of which she trashed) to find Chad standing at the stove humming along to their Christmas album.

"You know it's February, right?"

Chad jumped and turned around with a sheepish grin. "Yes, but can one ever really tire of Christmas music?"

Rose just chuckled and glanced around him at the stove. "What are you making?"

"A romantic Valentine's Day dinner for the love of my life."

"I don't think you can make dinner for your guitar."

He made a noise of protest, one that had Rose giggling. "I'll have you know that my guitar comes second to you," he huffed. "I mean, barely. But the thing is, you have sex with me while my guitar refuses every time I ask, so you're number one in my heart."

She suppressed the urge to laugh. "Every time?" she repeated. "Okay, I'm kinda afraid to ask how many times you've asked your guitar to have sex with you."

He chuckled, wiped his hands on a dish towel and leaned over to kiss her. "How goes the writing?"

"Fine," she lied while inwardly she wondered how she was supposed to have twelve new songs written by the deadline of March 15th that Philippe gave her when she barely had two done over the course of five weeks.

"That didn't sound too convincing."

She just shook her head. "I'm just stressed out. With my songwriting deadline coming up on top of my mother bugging me about wedding plans, I've got a lot on my plate."

"Exactly why I figured a night in would be a better use of our Valentine's Day," he said, pressing his lips to hers once again.

She melted into his touch, resting her forehead against his chin. "That and it seems as if any time we go out now, we get mobbed my photographers and fans alike."

"Yeah," he grimaced, "I thought of that, too, when I decided a quiet night in would be better than some over-the-top restaurant."

She hadn't even realized that that was exactly what she wanted until he was giving it to her. "It's like you read my mind, Chad."

"Now, you go sit down and pour yourself a glass of wine. Tonight, I will be the cook in the kitchen."

Her head tilted to the side curiously. "Do you even know how to cook?"

"I know how to boil spaghetti and stir tomato sauce in a pan," he teased.

Rose laughed and as an after-thought said, "Alright, I'll trust you. But if you burn down my kitchen, you're buying me a new condo."

He grinned. "Deal."

Mid-March came quickly and Rose had finished writing three good songs and about twenty mediocre ones. Unfortunately, Philippe agreed.

"Don't hate me for saying this, Rose, but this isn't your best work."

Rose surprised the producer by saying, "I know."

He then suggested going a different route, one that Rose should have seen coming but hadn't.

After her meeting, she dropped by Chad's place unannounced and was grateful when he opened the door. "Rose," he greeted with a smile. "I didn't think I'd be able to see you today."

"Philippe wants me to record other people's songs," she blurted out.

Chad blinked. "What?"

She sidled past him into the foyer and started pacing the floor. "I have had a terrible case of writer's block, Chad. I can't write anything decently. I just stare at the page and I swear, no words come out. I had to turn in something so I gave him what I had even though it was terrible and he suggested I take a look at other writing samples that had come in recently. Apparently, there are a ton of songwriters who would love the opportunity to work with me. But I've never done anything like that before. I've always sang my own work. That's how I put my heart into my music, into the lyrics, into the words and ultimately the melody. Because they're my own words. How can I connect to someone else's self-expression?"

When she stopped pacing long enough to look up at her fiancé, she found him staring at her with his mouth parted.

"Well?" she pleaded. "Aren't you going to say something?"

He chuckled sheepishly and walked towards her, planting his hands firmly on his shoulders. "Why didn't you tell me you were struggling?"

She wasn't surprised that he started with that question but it annoyed her nonetheless. "Can we not focus on that part and instead focus on the part that I'm actually freaking out about?"

"You could have talked to me," he said, disregarding her request. "I have the same job as you, Rose, so it's not like I wouldn't understand. I get what it's like to have writer's block and I get that it's the worst feeling in the world for a songwriter. But it doesn't have to destroy you."

Her irritation only grew, though she couldn't figure out if it was directed at the situation or at him. "And once again we aren't talking about what I need to be talking about."

He sighed. "You've been telling me that everything's been fine but it hasn't been. And I could have helped. I would have wanted to help."

"And I didn't want your help," she said stubbornly. "Maybe you sold out years ago to sing other people's songs but I wasn't looking to do the same."

The betrayal was etched clearly in his expression as he took a dumbfounded step back. "Oh, is that all I am?" he accused. "A sellout?"

She sighed. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Well, then, please tell me how you meant it," he spoke, folding his arms across his body.

How could Rose tell the one person who had always had her back that as much as she loved to sing, as much as she loved the spotlight on that stage, as much as she appreciated the albums she produced and the concerts she put on, it was the putting her heart and soul into writing poignant lyrics that she loved the most. She had never dreamt of being a famous recording artist with multiple hit albums and a fanbase to match. She had dreamt of being a songwriter, of watching the world fall in love with her lyrics and the emotions that go with it. The idea of singing someone else's lyrics felt like a betrayal to her own heart.

Then again, her heart wasn't speaking very loudly lately so what other option did she have?

"I'm a songwriter, Chad, not a singer," she spoke softly.

His eyebrow popped up. "I hate to break this to you but at some point in the last three years, you became both," he said curiously.

No, at some point in the last three years she became just a singer and the songwriting part of her somehow disappeared.

"Which is funny because that had never been my plan," Rose murmured, shaking her head curiously. "I've spent my entire life in the spotlight just because of my last name and I wanted nothing more than to shake away from it. Instead, I'm more in the spotlight now than ever before."

He hesitated. "Yeah, but now you're in the spotlight for you, not for who your parents are."

Rose offered him a weak smile in appreciation. "Which I definitely don't hate," she said. Her smile faded. "Though if I can't get my act together with this next album, there might not be a spotlight anymore."

He reached over and swept a stray hair off her forehead, saying softly, "I know how important songwriting is to you, Rose. I know that it means more to you than anything else in the world. But you've got a lot on your plate right now. It's okay to accept help from others."

She let out a disparaging sigh. "By 'others,' I'm assuming you mean songwriters," she muttered. It wasn't a question.

He nodded slowly. "I used to write all my own songs, too. Granted, none of them nearly as good as yours. And sure, I still do the occasional dabbling. But when your whole life is spent on the road and at concerts and gigs and promotional events and in the studio, not to mention the fact that we're planning a wedding, that doesn't leave a lot of time to let your creative juices flow."

He wasn't completely wrong. She did have a lot on her plate. But then again, that had never stopped her so-called creative juices flowing before. "I guess" was all she could think of to say.

Knowing she was unconvinced, he said, "It explains why you're dealing with writer's block right now. It's not because you don't know what to write, because we both know you've never had a problem with that, it's because your mind is busy with so much else."

She neglected to tell him that it didn't matter what was in her mind, it mattered what was in her heart because that is where her lyrics had always stemmed from. But she was too afraid, and perhaps too cowardly, to insinuate that her heart was the piece of her that was blocked, not to the man she intended to marry at the end of the year.

So instead, she said, "I'm sorry for calling you a sellout."

He shrugged. "I'll give you a pass on that one since I know how stressed out you are."

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders with a wary smile. "You really think taking a step back from my own writing will somehow made me less stressed out?"

"Only one way to find out."

She hated the very idea but unless she wanted to be out of a job on top of being out of lyric ideas, she knew she had little choice but to go along with it.

While Rose recorded songs written by other people, Scorpius was getting used to spending all his free time with Adrienne. They went on dates from time to time but spent most of their time just relaxing at one of their homes, preferring the quiet solitude of each other's company than the hustle and bustle of a busy restaurant.

"Should I feel ashamed that you never want to be seen with me in public?" Scorpius teased when he greeted Adrienne at his door with a kiss one April evening.

"Yes," she teased right back before sliding past him into his apartment.

He let out a sigh of mock dejection. "I knew it."

She peeled her jacket off and hung it on the coatrack before turning towards him to say, "I like hanging out with you, not a crowdful of annoying strangers."

"I'm sure they're not all annoying."

She gave him a look.

"Yeah, okay, they're all annoying."

The two of them laughed and Scorpius led them into his kitchen. He reached for a bottle of wine and poured them both a glass.

"But you do beg a good question," Adrienne said, clinking her glass to his.

His eyebrow popped up. "I do?"

She looked at him, the hesitation clear in her eyes, before saying, "What are we doing with each other exactly?"

Whatever question Scorpius was expecting her to ask, that wasn't it.

Or maybe he had just hoped she wouldn't ask it.

The two of them had been spending the past few months together without putting a label on it and as each day passed, Scorpius could feel the question just dangling tauntingly in the air. The answer should have been easy as he enjoyed every moment he spent with the girl. But every time the question popped up in his mind, it wasn't Adrienne at all that he was thinking about.

He never thought he'd find love and he had. He had unwittingly given his heart to a girl who turned around and shattered it into confetti of minuscule pieces without even realizing it. The very idea of putting himself out there again, of letting someone else into the confines of his fragile heart was terrifying because it had taken a very long time to get over Rose Weasley and he wasn't looking to ever go through that kind of pain again.

"Drinking wine?" Scorpius suggested with a hopeful grin as he held up his glass of Bordeaux.

She frowned, as he expected. "That's not an answer, Scorpius."

He was unfortunately aware of that but he wasn't sure he had an answer, at least not one that made sense. And so he said nothing at all.

But she seemed to think that was enough for she murmured, "But your silence certainly is."

He could feel his heart begin to race at the very intimate topic of conversation, one that was heading down a path he wasn't looking to head down. "I'm not very good at this," he admitted.

"At explaining yourself? No, you're really not," she drawled.

He winced, recognizing the frustration in her tone. With a sigh, he pleaded, "Tell me what I'm supposed to say here."

Adrienne looked both disappointed and annoyed at that answer. She took another large sip of wine before placing it on to the table. She turned to him and said, "I don't want to have to tell you what to say, Scorpius. How about when you figure it out on your own like the adult you're supposed to be, you come find me."

She walked out of the kitchen and Scorpius knew that he was supposed to go after her.

But he didn't.

Instead, he finished his wine, then finished hers off and when that didn't seem to give him the answers he was looking for, he apparated over to Albus' place and barged through the front door without knocking.

He heard running water in the kitchen and made his way over, peeking around the entryway and letting out a sigh of relief when he realized that Albus was alone. "No Ella?"

Albus yelped and jumped around, shooting Scorpius a glare. "For Merlin's sake, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

Scorpius just shrugged and leaned up against the kitchen cabinets. "Where's Ella tonight?"

"Out with some friends," Albus said as he finished up cleaning the dinner plates. "Where's Adrienne?"

"Somewhere being upset with me probably," he muttered.

Albus stopped cleaning long enough to give his friend a look. "And why would she be upset with you?"

Scorpius sighed. "She asked me today what we were."

Albus' eyebrows popped way into his forehead. "Shit, seriously?" he said with a grimace. "What did you say?"

He frowned and stared straight ahead to ignore the curiosity in his friend's gaze. "I pretty much said nothing," he mumbled.

There was a beat of silence before Albus groaned. "I thought you really liked her."

Scorpius did. But just because he liked her didn't mean he was ready to just give his heart away again. "I don't really want to talk about it," he mumbled for the last thing he wanted to discuss with Albus was his cousin who somehow kept invading his thoughts. "I came over here not to talk about it but for a distraction so please give me one."

Albus turned off the sink, searching for a change of subject, before turning towards his friend and saying, "Guess who asked me to be her Man of Honor at her wedding today?"

Scorpius had a feeling he was talking about a certain cousin of his set to marry at the end of the year.

The same cousin he was also trying to avoid thinking about.

So much for a distraction.

"Uh, so I guess congratulations are in order?" Scorpius said with a sheepish chuckle.

"I guess they would be if I knew at all what the hell a Man of Honor was."

Scorpius let out a light laugh. "I haven't a clue," he said with a shrug, "But I do hope it involves you wearing a dress."

Albus blanched. "Fucking hell, I should have said no."

"You wouldn't have said no," Scorpius argued.

Albus hesitated and then shrugged. "No, I suppose I wouldn't have," he murmured, "Even if I do think she's not nearly into this wedding as a bride-to-be probably should be."

Scorpius frowned. "Y'know, when I asked for a distraction, I don't know if having a chat about Rose was quite what I had in mind."

"Why not? Because when Adrienne asked you about your relationship, you couldn't help but think about Rose?"

Scorpius froze, staring at his friend in quiet shock.

"Yeah, don't think I don't know exactly what was running through your head when Adrienne broached the subject."

Scorpius sighed and pulled himself away from the cabinets, dropping down into one of the chairs around the kitchen table. "It's been three and a half years since Rose and I went our separate ways. Why should something from that long ago still affect me now?"

"That tends to happen when it comes to matters of the heart."

Scorpius gave his friend a look. "Because you're such an expert on matters of the heart?"

"No," Albus admitted with a shrug, "But I know how broken you were after things fell apart with Rose and I know it can't be easy to open yourself up to someone else knowing that the same thing could very well happen with her."

Scorpius' heart throbbed at the very idea.

"But the thing is, Scorpius," Albus spoke quietly, "Adrienne isn't Rose."

No.

She definitely wasn't.

And Scorpius couldn't figure out for the life of him if that was supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing.

He didn't have that answer. He didn't have a lot of answers. But what he did know was that he really liked Adrienne and if he didn't try to make things right with her, there was a strong chance he'd wind up completely alone and loveless. And while he had never been particularly upset or scared over the idea of living a loveless life, he did want to believe there was more to life than living it completely alone just because he was scared of the opposite.

So he apparated over to Adrienne's apartment and knocked on her door.

When she opened it, she had a sour look on her face. "It's late, Scorpius," she sighed.

"I've never been in a real relationship before and I've only been in love once," he blurted out. "And I was really bad at both. That's why this relationship stuff doesn't come so easy to me."

Surprise flickered in her eyes as she met the vulnerability in his. She didn't respond, the awkward silence trickling in, before she finally settled on, "How were you in love before but never in a relationship?"

He ran his fingers through his hair, shifting his gaze towards the hard wood floors so as not to look at her. "Because I didn't know it was love until it was too late to stop it from happening."

Those words appeared to bewilder her. "You wanted to stop it?" she asked, confused.

He offered her a single shrug. "I don't know if 'want' is the right word," he muttered. "But I should have stopped it. I wish I had. She was the completely wrong person for me in pretty much every way possible. We were friends and then suddenly…we weren't. I made the mistake of letting her know that I loved her and she didn't do anything. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me like I was ruining everything between us. And the unfortunate thing is, she wasn't wrong."

Adrienne dissected his words carefully before speaking next. "Is this your subtle way of telling me that you're afraid of falling for someone else who is equally as wrong for you?"

"No," Scorpius argued immediately, shaking his head. "For one, in all the ways in which she was wrong for me, you are completely right. But my reservations aren't about that."

When he paused, clearly uncertain how to continue, she pleaded with him. "Then what are they about?"

He looked up, an unforeseeable tenderness flickering in his otherwise guarded eyes. "The hardest thing I ever had to do was walk away from her," he spoke softly, "And it took me a really long time to get over it. Longer than I care to admit. And I just don't know if my heart can take something like that again."

Her eyes softened. "Heartbreak is never easy," she agreed. "I mean, people always warn you that it isn't but hearing it and going through it are two entirely different Quidditch pitches. You think you'll be able to get over it and move on but something happens – someone mentions their name or you find one of their old socks in the bottom of your hamper or you see someone that reminds you of the – and suddenly, it's like your heart is breaking all over again."

The words she spoke somehow made his heart ache more than it already was. "I couldn't get away from her," he murmured. "I couldn't get her out of my head and it didn't help that she was everywhere. Her name was everywhere. I couldn't avoid her even if I tried. And I definitely tried."

Bewilderment settled into Adrienne's expression. "Why was she everywhere?"

Scorpius' heart skipped a beat at the loaded question. He knew there was no going back now, no matter how much his heart was hurting with the very idea of admitting the truth out loud, a truth he had forced himself to bury years earlier.

But if there was ever a time to unbury it, it was now.

"Because," he murmured, "She was Rose Weasley."

Her mouth parted, the shock and surprise flashing across her eyes. "_Rose Weasley? _Famous singer, daughter of two of the three Golden Trio, cousin to Albus, Rose Weasley?" she whispered hoarsely.

Scorpius nodded numbly. "That would be the one," he muttered. "I certainly know how to choose them, don't I? Right before she and I parted ways, she got her first recording deal. So she moved up in the world and I just moved to America."

She blinked. "America?"

He sighed. "I wanted to get away from her," he explained. "As it turns out, the wizarding world is quite small and not even an ocean between us could change that."

She nodded but he could tell she was barely listening to him, too lost in her own thoughts.

"It's not all that uncommon for people to be afraid of getting their heart broken, Scorpius," she said softly. "It's okay to admit that. It just makes you human."

He wasn't afraid of having his heart broken. He was afraid that it was already broken and that it would never be pieced back together.

(Not that he'd ever admit that out loud.)

"It's not easy for me to talk about her," he spoke softly. "So I just…don't."

A frown slowly crept into Adrienne's expression. "Are you not over her?"

"I am," Scorpius urged with a sincere nod and while his heart fluttered at the very thought, he knew that deep down it was the truth. There were times he'd miss what they once had, what they once were, but it wasn't fueld by love, it was fueled by nostalgia. "It took me a while to get there but I did. At some point, I let her go because I knew there was nothing left to hold on to anymore. But just because I've moved on and put our past in the past doesn't mean that it's easy talking about what we had. Or, really, what we didn't."

He could see there was still some hesitation in her eyes but he thought the smile she offered him was a good sign. "I get it" was all she said.

He was hoping for a little more than that but knew she was still protecting her heat very much the same way he had for the past three and a half years.

Taking a step towards her, he said, "I know that I can and most likely I _will _be pretty bad at the whole laying-your-heart-out-on-the-line but all I can do is promise to try to be better. Because I want to be with you, Adrienne. If you'll still have me."

The shock shone in her eyes, a slow smile spreading across her expression. "Really?"

He nodded bashfully.

Her smile widened. Right before it slid off her face with a groan. "You fell in love with Rose Weasley," she murmured in disbelief as if she was only just realizing it. "Merlin, that makes me feel just a tad inadequate, doesn't it."

"No, because you actually want to be with me," he said softly. "She never did."

Hesitance appeared in her gaze as she locked eyes with Scorpius'.

"Unless, that is, you no longer want to be with me," he winced at her silence.

She chuckled. "I do," she spoke in a quiet voice. "I just want to make sure it's what you really want."

And even though everything about the situation scared him, even though his heart was aching with so much trepidation, even though the very idea of opening up his heart to someone else was sending him on the verge of a panic attack, he also knew that if anyone could quiet his fears it would be Adrienne Goyle.

And so he took another step towards her, closing the small gap between them, and snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her towards him. "You're what I want, Adrienne," he pleaded.

She smiled and responded with a kiss.

The next few months passed by in blissful ease.

Well, for one of them anyway.

With every day that passed, Rose became more and more stressed and in turn, became more and more overwhelmed. Not by tangibles but by all the things she couldn't control. Her emotions were starting to get the better of her and while she tried to hide it as best she could, she knew she wasn't doing such a great job at it.

"That's the fourth interview you've turned down," Chad said to her one July afternoon.

She sighed. "Because all anyone seems to care about right now is our wedding and I'd much rather focus all of my energy in the studio finishing the last of my album," she explained. "Philippe wants to release it before Christmas but I'm still having trouble with this last song."

"Your song or someone else's?"

"Mine," she murmured.

"So it's the lyrics that are troubling you?"

She sighed and then nodded. "It's almost there," she explained. "It's just not quite right yet."

He looked at her curiously before nodding himself. "You'll get there," he reassured her, leaning over to press a kiss to her forehead. "In the meantime, the press is going to start thinking you have something to hide if you keep turning down these promotional interviews."

"They aren't promotional interviews," she grumbled. "All they care about is floral arrangements and our menu and color palettes. Like I don't have an actual life outside of wedding plans."

"At lease someone cares."

Rose froze, turning towards him in shock. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

He frowned, dropping down on to the barstool beside her with a sigh. "It means I've been more involved in wedding plans than you," he spoke softly. "No, correction, I've been the only one of us involved in our wedding plans."

"I've been busy," she reminded him. "This album-"

"I know," he sighed. "But you don't even have a wedding dress yet and the wedding is five months away. Should I be concerned?"

She gaped at him. "Concerned about what?"

His gaze met hers but only for a moment before he turned away with a heavy sigh. "Us."

Her mouth parted. "Chad-"

"This isn't in my head, Rose," he spoke softly, finding a sudden interest in the floor tiles. "You've been distant lately. Withdrawn. I try to make time for us but you don't. I try to talk about the wedding with you and you change the subject. I barely get to see you and when I do it's because I'm the one putting forth the effort. What's going on?"

An unexpected panic squeezed down on her heart as he spoke, knowing that every word he spoke was true.

Problem was, she didn't know why she was suddenly so withdrawn.

She blamed it on the album and her music because that was easier than admit something bigger was going on. Something bigger that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

It wasn't that she didn't want to marry Chad. He had been her rock during a time when she had felt lost and confused. Her life finally felt stable and satisfactory when for so long, she was convinced it never would be. And he was to thank for that. He gave her that very first break he had needed and he had supported her ever since. She loved him. And she knew he loved her.

So then why couldn't she seem to get excited for her wedding the way everyone else was?

"I didn't realize you felt that way," she said, though even she knew it would have only been a matter of time before he picked up on it.

"I don't want to be the cause of any more stress in your life," he spoke softly. "I just want to be in your life."

She grimaced. "I'm a bad fiancée."

He cracked a smile. "You're not a bad anything, Rose."

"No, don't do that," she groaned. "Don't compliment me and make me feel special when I hardly deserve it."

"You deserve nothing less than the best."

"Stopppp," she whined and that time, he laughed. With a sigh, she said, "I guess being in the studio day in and day out singing someone else's words has taken more of a toll on me than even I realized. It's hard to feel something that didn't come from my own heart. And I guess it's made me a bit more detached from not only my music but the world. But I never meant to isolate you, too."

He offered her a small smile. "I know everyone looks at our life and thinks it's all glamour, but this is a job to us just as much as any other. It takes balance. It can be overwhelming and stressful at times. We know what it's like to feel pressure. And that's okay, Rose. It's okay to feel that way. And it's okay to admit it. No one is perfect. Not even you no matter just how close to it you are."

She replayed his words in her head and suddenly wondered when music had become a job and not the one thing she loved most in the world.

When did she stop loving it?

That thought struck fear in her heart but she was afraid to voice it aloud, afraid of admitting that she had become someone she didn't even recognize.

Instead, she forced herself to smile up at the man who just wanted to love her. "Okay, if anyone here is perfect, it's clearly you," she said, leaning over to press her lips to his.

"If I'm perfect, it's because you made me that way."

She scrunched her nose up. "I'm trying to decide if that was the most romantic thing you've ever said or the cheesiest."

He grinned and planted a kiss at the top of her nose. "Who says it can't be both?"

While Rose reluctantly dove into wedding planning, Scorpius was introducing Adrienne to his family and hoping that wasn't a big mistake.

"A Goyle, hm?" his father said when he shook her hand. "Your father and I used to be mates."

Adrienne nodded. "Yes, he said something about that. Called you a cunning son-of-a-bitch, too."

Scorpius stifled a laugh as Draco's mouth parted. "I think coming from him that's a compliment," he teased.

Adrienne chuckled. "He says hello by the way."

"Tell that devious bastard, I say hello, too."

She grinned and Scorpius chimed in to say, "And that's my dad's way of offering him a compliment."

The night went rather smoothly, so smoothly that it put Scorpius on edge for introducing his girlfriend to his parents couldn't possibly be that easy, could it?

As they said their good-byes and wandered out the door, Adrienne turned to Scorpius and said, "Okay, what's with you?"

His eyebrow shot up. "What do you mean?"

"It's like you were waiting for one of us to say the wrong thing the whole time."

He grimaced. "My father isn't the easiest person to please, Adrienne."

"I think I did a pretty decent job."

"You did," he spoke quickly. "But truth be told, I was expecting quite the opposite."

"Gee, thanks," she laughed.

He shook his head defensively. "No, not because of you," he groaned. "Because of him. He hasn't always been accepting of some of the choices I've made in my personal life and I guess I'm still just that boy waiting for him to disapprove."

Adrienne said nothing as they strolled down the quiet street, the chirps of a distant cricket filling the dead air. "You referring to Rose?"

Scorpius blinked in surprise at those words and perhaps hesitated too long before saying, "Among other things."

"Like?"

Scorpius felt squeezed into a corner as he let out a reluctant sigh. "Albus, too," he said. "Suffice to say, he thought my choices in friends could use some work."

She said nothing but Scorpius could see the hesitant curiosity settle into her expression. "Did he know that Rose was more than just a friend?"

This was not the conversation he has been expecting to have but he knew there was no way of taking it back now. "I'm pretty sure he suspected it," he murmured. "But seeing as one of the Malfoy traits is to ignore anything that makes us feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable, he never said anything to me about it."

"Mm."

Scorpius grabbed her arm and kept her from walking on. "Mm?"

Adrienne turned to her with a hesitant smile. "You are always so quick to tell me all the bad qualities that Malfoys possess," she said with a shrug, "But from where I'm standing, I only see good ones."

Scorpius' cheeks flushed, a grateful smile flashing across his face. "Then you clearly need to spend more time with my family," he teased.

Her eyebrow shot up. "Was that an invitation?"

He hesitated. Because he had always assumed that it was best to keep his family life separate from his personal one, at least in the past, but Adrienne was not only someone that felt perfect to him, she was so clearly a perfect fit into his family, too.

And he could pretend that a small part of him wasn't thinking about Rose in that moment, a girl who had been and always would be so very wrong for him, a girl whose family had stood for all the opposite things that his family had once stood for, a girl who never would have fit into the Malfoy name, but he'd be lying to himself. Because he did think of Rose and he thought of all the reasons that they couldn't be together, then or now, and then he looked at Adrienne and knew that she was all the things he never thought he needed but now knew he wanted.

So he smiled at Adrienne and said, "My family would be lucky to know you, Adrienne, just like I am."

While Adrienne continued to get to know Scorpius' family, something that both confused and surprised him, Rose spent the last weekend in July at a bridal boutique looking for a wedding dress alongside her mother and her Man of Honor. She had gone a handful of times in the past with a larger crowd than she had wanted, with Lily and Molly and Aunt Ginny insisting on accompanying her. Certain aspects of it had been fun as they all drank their champagne and laughed about some of the more hideous dress options in the store, but no one seemed to be able to agree on a dress for her and in the end, it had become just another thing in her life to overwhelm her.

So she decided to lose the crowd and bring the only two people whose opinion she really cared about.

"I wasn't aware that part of the Man of Honor's duties was to pick out a dress for the bride," Albus sighed as the three of them wandered into the bridal shop. "Is this the right time to tell you that they all look the same to me?"

Rose elbowed him in the side with a laugh. "You're really only here to stop my mother from going all teary-eyed every time I come out in a dress."

"I do not get all teary-eyed every time—yeah, okay, I do," her mother said sheepishly, earning a laugh from the other two. Wrapping her arm around her daughter's shoulders, she said with a sentimental sigh, "But hey, I think I've earned that right seeing as the girl in the dress _is _my only daughter."

Rose sighed and turned towards Albus. "Now do you see why I brought you along?"

She was convinced that finding a dress was a complete lost cause, wondered how much against tradition it would be to show up wearing her favorite red dress, as the appointment neared the end and she was still nowhere even close to finding anything she liked.

"I'm hopeless," she said, staring into the mirror at a bedazzled mermaid gown that accentuated all the wrong areas.

"Oh, you are not," her mother said, clicking her tongue. "You're just a perfectionist."

"Nah, she's totally hopeless," Albus teased, earning a glare from both of the Weasleys.

"You are not helping, Al," Rose's mother groaned. "What about lace? Any qualms about lace, dear?"

Rose shrugged. "At this point, I'll try anything."

Her mother disappeared to find the dress consultant and Albus used that time to say, "Alright, spill."

She looked at him through the reflection of the mirror. "Spill what? And don't say the champagne because I have a feeling I'd then be forced to buy this horrendous dress."

He rolled his eyes. "What's keeping you from choosing a dress?"

"Besides the fact that none of them are right?"

"Yeah, and why exactly do you think that is?"

It was Rose who rolled her eyes this time. "I don't know but I have a feeling you're about to tell me."

He hesitated before shaking his head. "You've tried on nearly a hundred dresses, Rose, and-"

"Forty."

"-every single one you've tried on, there's been something off about it. Sometimes, you know exactly what it is. Other times, you just didn't get that feeling. But if you ask me, there's a reason for that."

Rose frowned and looked at her reflection again in the mirror. He wasn't wrong. Every dress she tried on felt wrong but she couldn't always pinpoint what made it wrong.

So maybe it wasn't the dress that was wrong, maybe it was her.

"I'm scared."

Albus' eyebrow popped up. "Okay, now we're getting somewhere," he spoke softly. "Scared of what?"

Everything.

For the second time in her life, she felt as if her life and the world around her was completely out of her control. For the second time in her life, she felt powerless in her own body. She felt confused and conflicted and overwhelmed and she didn't know if it was her or her music or Chad or maybe a combination of all three.

The first time she had ever felt like that, it was the day that Scorpius walked away from her and the last thing she wanted, perhaps the only thing she wanted, was to never have to feel that way ever again.

"I don't talk about it much," she spoke softly, sensing the concern in her best friend's eyes, "But my heart was completely broken the day that Scorpius…"

"Walked away from you?"

She met Albus' gaze and slowly nodded. "It was the single most painful moment of my life," she whispered. "And I just don't ever want to feel that way again, not if it can be avoided."

Albus contemplated her words carefully before reading between the lines. "So you're afraid that Chad will break your heart?"

She hesitated before saying, "I'm afraid I'm the one doing the breaking."

Albus blinked in surprise. "What?"

Rose hiked up the long skirt and climbed down the steps of the pedestal before joining Albus on the couch. "I've been holding so much of me back lately," she whispered. "In my music, from Chad, hell even from myself. Because maybe, just maybe, if it all falls apart then it won't have to hurt so much."

She felt slight comfort from Albus who placed his arm around her shoulders and squeezed ever-so-softly. "Who says it has to fall apart at all, Rosie?"

She turned towards him, sensing an unexpected amount of hope in his voice. "Because it all has to end at some point, doesn't it?" she murmured more to herself than to him. "I can't just get everything I've ever wanted without there being some type of hiccup. It just can't be that easy. Can it?"

He chuckled. "Oh, Merlin, you're actually unhappy that you're happy, aren't you?"

"_No_."

He let out another laugh. "You're allowed to be happy, Rose," he insisted. "Maybe once upon a time, things fell apart for you but that doesn't mean they'll always end that way. Enjoy what you have. Enjoy your career and your fame and especially enjoy that boy you have wrapped around your finger. He is madly in love with you, Rose. And why shouldn't he be? You are bloody perfect. And I promise you, he's not the only one who thinks so."

Her heart suddenly felt lighter with every word Albus spoke for he said something that she had never really considered before.

Just because things went wrong for her once did not mean that they were going to go wrong this time, too.

The only way they were going to go wrong is if she made them go wrong.

She didn't want to give up all that she had. She didn't want to lose her voice, her music, her heart. And she especially didn't want to lose Chad.

It was time she ignored the fears running through her head and just listened to her heart.

So when her mother came out holding up a beautiful off-shoulder empire waist satin gown, she knew in her heart that that was the one.

And so was Chad.

The end of the summer came and went, the humidity suddenly replaced with an unexpected autumn chill as the trees changed colors and a constant breeze filled the air. And with the first week of November came the release of Rose's album.

She was at the Burrow that night, the champagne flowing as she and her family, and Chad, listened to all twelve songs on repeat, her cousins randomly chiming in with their opinions on their favorite songs.

It was James, who strangely enough had a girl with him that they all liked, who eventually asked, "Which ones were written by you, Rosie?"

"Uh, first, don't call me that," Rose warned. "And second, why not just take a look at the album insert?"

"Because my brat of a sister keeps hogging it," he huffed.

"I heard that!" Lily called out from the other room.

"Well, I said it loud!" James fired back.

Rose chuckled before telling him the three songs she wrote, the three that were, of course, her favorite.

"Personally," Molly later spoke in all her bluntness, "I liked your first album better."

Rose's eyebrow shot up. "Oh?"

"Felt more like you," she said dismissively before disappearing into the kitchen for another glass of champagne.

To say that those words didn't slightly haunt Rose would have been a lie.

Things were only made worse when she ran into an unexpected person of her past only two days later.

She was coming out of the bank at the same time he was entering it and they both did an awkward double-take when they realized who was standing in front of them.

"Scorpius," Rose said. "Hi."

"Rose," he replied. "Uh, yeah, hi."

Neither said anything more as the awkwardness built up between them until finally Rose cleared her throat and said, "Well. Bye."

She shuffled past him and was almost out the door when he spoke next.

"Congratulations on the album."

She hesitated in the doorway before turning around. "Did you listen to it?"

He was the one who hesitated next before nodding. "Yeah," he said for it had been on loop at the office on Friday thanks to his coworkers. "It was…different."

Her eyes narrowed. "Different?" she drawled.

He hesitated before saying, "You want the truth?"

She wasn't entire surely but found herself nodding anyway.

"It didn't really sound like you. Most of it anyway."

She was slightly put off by the fact that he seemed to recognize something was different with the album. And though knew she didn't owe him anything, she said anyway, "Oh, well, some of the songs weren't written by me."

Those words sent a jolt of shock to his heard. "Oh," he said awkwardly. "You sang other people's songs?"

"Yeah," she said with a casual shrug.

"Oh," he said again.

It was clear he wasn't saying something and that irritated Rose more than when he said the album hadn't sounded like her. "What aren't you saying?" she spoke, perhaps just a tad too harshly.

"Nothing" he said a little too quickly.

She shot him a look. "You've never had a problem speaking your mind before, Scorpius, so please just say whatever it is you want to say."

This had disaster written all over it but he found himself saying, "I guess I just never pictured you as someone who would be singing someone else's songs, that's all."

She grunted. "Oh, so you think I'm a sellout?"

"What? _No_," he groaned, shaking his head almost immediately. "I just mean that I always thought it was the songwriting part that you loved the most about your industry, not the actual singing part. You've always had a beautiful voice, don't get me wrong, but I guess I thought that the only reason you ever really started to sing for other people wasn't so that you could share your voice with the world but so you could share your heart. Maybe I'm wrong but I always thought your lyrics were what mattered the most to you."

Rose felt her heart flutter at the significance of his words, wondering how it was that he seemed to know her so well when they hadn't had any real contact in nearly four years.

Wondering how it was that he seemed to know her better than Chad.

Because of course he wasn't wrong. She hadn't fallen in love with music for the fame or the money or the accolades. She fell in love with music because her heart led her there. Not to the stage, not to the studio, not to the radio. No, her heart led her to a tiny little notebook that held all of her secrets and dreams and desires. That notebook was her greatest treasure in a sea of muddled emotions. It didn't matter what was going on her life, whether she was going through a rough patch or whether she was happy, she put her every feeling into song. In a world that had let her down in so many ways, her voice was always there.

And no, she wasn't talking about her singing voice.

Looking up at Scorpius, so much of her hated him for recognizing the fraud in her. And yet, so much of her appreciated it, too. Because that meant it wasn't completely lost. She wasn't completely lost. Her voice and her heart and her lyrics weren't completely lost. And that meant that one day, she could find them again.

"You're not wrong," she eventually said, meeting the skepticism in his gaze. "But my life has been a bit of a whirlwind lately. So my producer offered me some help and I took it."

Scorpius wasn't entirely sure he believed her but he just nodded. "Well, congratulations," he said with a shrug, "I already hear you're breaking records everywhere."

She nodded gratefully and since there was nothing left to say, they both went their separate ways.

Rose made the mistake of mentioning the interaction to Albus who had in turn made the mistake of mentioning the interaction to Scorpius a few days later, which wouldn't have mattered much except that Adrienne was there and Scorpius had made his own mistake in _not _mentioning the interaction to her.

"Wait, when did you run into Rose?" Adrienne spoke, interrupting Albus mid-sentence.

Albus and Scorpius shared an awkward grimace before the latter turned towards his girlfriend. "Sometime this weekend," he spoke dismissively. "At Gringotts. It was nothing."

"Then why didn't you mention it?"

"Uh, because it was nothing?" he said again with a teasing grin.

She looked unamused however. "If it was nothing, then why were you hiding it?"

"I wasn't," he groaned and shot Albus a furtive glare that told the boy he was in for a world of trouble later. "I completely forgot about it to be honest. We barely spoke, just an exchange of a few words and-"

"What did you talk about?"

Scorpius sighed. "Her album. I said congratulations, she said thanks and then we went our separate ways," he summarized, leaving out the part where he analyzed said album. "That's all. Really, Adrienne, it was nothing."

Adrienne glanced over at Ella who had found a sudden interest in her beer before sighing. "Okay, maybe I'm overreacting," Adrienne murmured with a sheepish grin. "But does your ex-girlfriend have to be so bloody famous? It's intimidating!"

Albus couldn't help but laugh at that, Ella too, but Scorpius just let out the tiniest of chuckles and said, "She's not my ex-girlfriend. We never actually dated."

"Officially," Adrienne spoke offhandedly.

"And there's no reason to be intimidated by her," Scorpius argued. "She's a normal human being, just like anybody else."

"Yeah," Albus chimed in with a shrug before Adrienne could protest, "I could tell you all of her embarrassing childhood stories to prove just how 'human being, just like everybody else' she is. Like the one time she decided to paint her cat red and green and her mother woke all of us up on Christmas morning when she screamed bloody murder. Rose was grounded for a month after that."

Ella was doubled over in laughter while Scorpius held his own laugh back. Adrienne looked torn between laughing and rolling her eyes. She went with a combination of both. "Dare I ask how old she was at the time?"

"Old enough to know better," Albus smirked.

When Scorpius and Adrienne left the bar later that night, the latter grabbed his hand and said, "I'm sorry I keep bringing up your ex."

"Not my ex," he murmured for a second time. And with a teasing grin, added, "And when do I get to learn about all of yours?"

Adrienne grimaced. "There isn't much to tell. Hard to date when you're a Goyle."

Scorpius met her gaze and said, "Hard to date when you're a Malfoy."

She sighed. "Well, don't we make for one sad couple."

Scorpius squeezed her hand. "I actually think we make for one happy couple, Adrienne."

A grateful smiled appeared on her face. "Do you always say the right thing, Scorpius?"

He instinctively shook his head. "Hardly ever," he dismissed before leaning over to press his lips against hers.

November passed quickly and with the first week of December came a _Prophet _one-page spread about the upcoming wedding of Rose Weasley and Chad Bennington. It told the story of how they met and how they climbed the music ladder to success, both separately and together. It spoke of their love story, of the first time they kissed and the moment that Chad proposed. And it painted an elaborate picture of the impending venue and the guest list and the planned festivities.

It made Chad smile.

It made Rose queasy.

She blamed it on nerves.

She reminded herself that she loved him while also trying not to remind herself that she only had three weeks before she'd become someone's wife.

Scorpius was at work when Ella dropped the article on to his desk. "Guess it's really happening," she said.

He looked at the embraced couple, his eyes zooming in on their smiling faces. "Guess so" was all he said in return before handing her back the paper.

"You don't want to read it?"

No, he didn't.

"Y'know, she once said she didn't believe in marriage," he found himself deflecting.

Ella's eyebrow popped upward. "Something must have changed her mind."

She started to walk away but not before Scorpius said, "Or someone."

When she turned around to comment, she saw him walking off in the opposite direction.

He found himself up on the rooftop, the December breeze nipping at his nose, and he tried thinking about anything except that fateful December night where Rose showed up with a recording of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and he brought her up to that very same rooftop to thank her.

There was an ache in Scorpius' heart that confused him for it had been a really long time since Rose had affected his heart. She had affected his mind plenty of times since had gone their separate ways but his heart had given up on her so many years earlier.

Or so he thought.

He couldn't make sense of any of it. She was supposed to be a part of his past but it was so hard keeping her there when her name kept popping up everywhere he went. He couldn't hide from her any more than he could hide from himself. And maybe there was a reason he was on that rooftop.

Maybe.

Or maybe he was just reading too much into it.

"Hey."

Scorpius jumped, glancing to his right where Albus now stood. "Shouldn't you be working?" Scorpius grumbled.

"Shouldn't you?"

Scorpius frowned and said nothing. He had a feeling Ella had gone in search for Albus and that he was there now to talk about the very thing that Scorpius hadn't wanted to talk about with Ella.

"So, you saw the article?"

So predictable.

"Saw it, acknowledged it, discarded it," Scorpius responded.

"Without reading it."

Scorpius shot him a look. "Of course I didn't read it. I don't need to hear all about their perfect life together, Al. If she's happy then I'm happy for her."

Even as he spoke the words he could hear how hollow they sounded.

"You don't have to be," Albus said softly.

"And why shouldn't I be?" he countered. "Our relationship, or whatever the hell it was, was fundamentally wrong in every way. She has a good thing with Chad. And I have a good thing with Adrienne. So why should I care that she's getting married?"

Albus didn't respond immediately, knowing that the moment he said what he was thinking he wouldn't be able to take it back.

He said it anyway.

"You shouldn't," he spoke softly. "But you do."

He did.

But he really wished he didn't.

She got to have the perfect life and the perfect relationship and the perfect everything with Chad that she never had with him. Their relationship had been messy from the start. Their timing had always been off. And that wasn't the only thing that was. He was a Malfoy and she was a Weasley and while she said so many times that that didn't matter to her, in the only moment that counted, it had.

He never could have been her happy ending.

So she found it in Chad.

He wanted to be happy for her. And maybe one day he would be. But on that particular day, he was too busy regretting their past to be happy for her future.

That night, three weeks to the day to her rehearsal dinner, Rose managed to slip away from her cooing mother and skip off to dinner with Albus, who seemed far more distracted than she even did.

"What gives, Al?"

He looked up, startled. "Sorry, what?"

She sat back, her arms folding across her body. "You've been lost in your own head all night. What's up?"

Albus was all ready to shake his head but instead, blurted out, "I asked Ella to marry me today."

Rose's mouth dropped open. "_What_?" she practically screeched.

Albus cringed. "I-I didn't mean to."

She leaned across the table, hissing, "How does one propose without meaning to?"

He groaned and went to rub his temples. "That stupid article came out today about you and Chad and I was talking to Ella about it and she said Scorpius was being weird about it so then I went to go talk to him about it and he seemed so withdrawn and regretful and I just kept looking at him, hoping that I'd never turn out like that, hoping I'd be able to face my feelings instead of hide from them, especially when it comes to the people I love, so I found myself talking to Ella again and instead of just telling her what Scorpius said, I took one freaking look at her and said, 'Will you marry me?'"

Rose's heart skipped so many beats at all the mentions of Scorpius. She ignored them all. "And what did she say?"

"She seemed to think I was crazy and we both just laughed it off," he muttered. "But I'm not crazy. I've spent all day thinking about it and I just…I want her in my life. Always. She's the only girl I've ever loved, the only girl I can ever imagine loving, and I want to wake up every morning next to her. I want to call her my wife. I want to start a family with her. I want my future and everything in it to be with her."

There was a crushing feeling of panic weighing down on Rose's heart as Albus spoke, his heart and soul exposed in his every word. He had only known Ella for a year and yet he felt so confident in her, in their relationship, in the love he felt. Rose had been with Chad for almost four years and there were still times she questioned it.

She was the one getting married in three weeks. Shouldn't she be the one confident in her relationship?

"Did you tell her that?" Rose asked, ignoring her own insecurities.

He shook his head. "Not yet."

She suddenly had an overwhelming urge to cry but she swallowed it away and said, "You should. You shouldn't ever wait to tell the people that you love just how much you love them."

_ You should especially not wait ten months to tell them._

Albus clearly sensed her uncertainty for he said, "Did I say something wrong?"

"Not at all," she pleaded. "You said all the right things, Al. I'm just not the person you should be saying them to."

He leaned back in his chair, his lips pursing curiously. "Or maybe you're exactly the person I should be saying them to."

A lump formed in her throat that she proceeded to ignore. "What do you mean?"

His eyes narrowed as he studied his cousin, her eyes darting about to look anywhere but at him, her cheeks flushed, her hunched over body, the guilt in her expression. "It's not too late, Rose," he blurted out.

Rose's brow furrowed. "What's not too late?"

He felt his own heart begin to race inside his chest as he said, "It's not too late to call off the wedding."

She was stunned, just for a moment, before she let out a laugh. "Now why would I want to go and do a thing like that?"

Another quiet pause of silence before he spoke again. "Because all the things that I feel for Ella might not be all the things you feel for Chad."

He wasn't wrong.

But she pretended he was.

"Oh, come off it," she dismissed, shaking her head at him. "I love Chad and he loves me."

"I know you do," he sighed. "But is it the same love that you used to feel for Scorpius?"

No.

But why was different a bad thing?

"That…that's in the past," she sputtered, shaking her head.

Albus frowned. "Why is it always so easy for you to talk about loving Chad and yet any time the subject comes up regarding Scorpius, it's a struggle? Doesn't that say something, Rose?"

"That isn't fair," she scowled, ignoring the heavy ache that was beginning to form in her heart. "Scorpius and I were never anything. It had come as a surprise to me just as much as it had him. It's hard to talk about because there are so many what-ifs and what-could-have-beens involved. With Chad, I know exactly where I stand. I always have. I never had that with Scorpius."

"Maybe that's a good thing," Albus sighed. "Maybe not everything in life has to be so predictable and easy."

"If you think anything I had with Scorpius is easy, you know even little about the situation than I thought."

He sighed. "It just sounds like maybe you and Scorpius have some unfinished business."

Rose's eyes narrowed. "Believe me when I say that we are very much finished," she snapped. "Much like this conversation is about to be."

He seemed unfazed by her clear irritation. "Don't' you think that there might be a reason you're getting so worked up over this?"

She glared at him. "I'm getting worked up over this because of the timing of this ridiculous conversation!" she hissed. "How can you bring this up now, Al? How can you talk about this three weeks before I'm supposed to marry someone else?"

"Because if you don't talk about it now I'm afraid you'll wind up marrying a guy you're only just settling for and dammit, Rose, _you deserve better than that_. And frankly, so does Chad."

Those words felt like a slap to Rose's face as she gaped at the person in front of her, a guy who was supposed to be standing next to her on her wedding day as she vowed to love a man that clearly Albus didn't think was right for her.

"You think I'm settling for Chad?" she spoke coolly. "A guy who has done nothing but love me for three years? Who is perfect for me in every way? Who gets me and my life, who gets how I think and how I feel. It's easy being with him, Al. It's-"

"For the love of Merlin, I'm so tired of you saying how easy your relationship is!" he said stubbornly. "Everything else you've ever gotten you had to work incredibly hard for. So why are you taking the easy route in your love life? Did you ever think that maybe easy doesn't always mean right?"

Anger bubbled up inside of her for Albus was supposed to be the one person who always had her back, not the one person trying to stab a knife through it.

"If that's really what you think," she whispered hoarsely, pushing her chair back forcefully, "Then maybe you're better off not coming to the wedding at all."

She stormed out of the restaurant then.

And Albus didn't go after her.

Rose pretended the conversation never happened.

Or at least tried to.

And she wasn't the only one who was letting someone get into her head.

When Scorpius returned from an unexpected meeting with the Heads of the Department the very next day, Ella looked up from her cauldrons and asked, "What was that about?"

He looked at her with a slight frown, reeling from the conversation he just shared with his boss. "The American apothecary wants me back on another yearlong assignment."

Ella's mouth parted. "Oh," she said, the surprise evident in her tone. "Are you going to take it?"

He said nothing.

"So you're considering it," she corrected based on his silence.

He met her gaze. "No," he spoke hesitantly. "Maybe? I don't know."

"What about Adrienne?"

He was wondering when that would come up. "Yes, what about Adrienne," he murmured to himself.

Ella rolled her eyes. "You're killing me here, Scorpius. Give me _something _to go on."

He dropped down into an empty stool beside his friend and coworker with a heavy sigh. "I loved that assignment," he said softly. "I was working on life-changing experimental potions, ones that might actually one day make a difference. I'd be doing something I loved."

"While running away from someone you love."

Those words send a chill to Scorpius' heart for while his relationship with Adrienne made him happier than he had been in a long time, neither had said they loved each other. Nor was Scorpius sure he was there yet. Or maybe he was and he was just too afraid to see it for himself.

"Adrienne and I haven't said that to each other yet," he murmured.

Ella looked at him briefly before turning back to the potion at her station. She reached out and stirred the liquid slowly before saying, "I wasn't talking about Adrienne."

That confused and annoyed Scorpius. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Ella's lips pursed in the way they often did when she knew she was getting ready to land herself in hot water. "Funny how you're considering a job opportunity that will take you across the Atlantic from everything you know and have come to accept—your friends, your family, the girl you've been seeing since January—just three weeks before the girl who broke your heart is set to get married. The same soon-to-be marriage that was just written about in yesterday's _Prophet_."

It dawned on Scorpius what she was trying to say and all he could do was gape at her. "You honestly think me considering a job that is perfect for me has something to do with a girl I haven't been with in _four years_?"

Ella shrugged. "I think it's interesting how the moment things start to go right in your life is the moment you decide it's time to run away again."

"Stop telling me I'm running away," Scorpius hissed. "I cannot believe you are turning this into something it isn't. This is my career, Ella. This has nothing to do with my personal life."

"And yet most people who have been dating someone for eleven months wouldn't have to think twice about saying no to a temporary assignment in the States."

His mouth parted before he growled and said, "Screw you, Ella," right before he stormed out.

He was livid with her.

Not because she was wrong.

Because he was afraid she might be right.

The last time he took a job in America, it was to get away from Rose.

Was he considering taking another job in America for the very same reason?

Scorpius was mad at Ella and Rose was mad at Albus. And if these friendships weren't already on the rocks, both Rose and Scorpius had to find out that their friends were engaged the same way everyone else did.

**Albus Potter Pops The Question and She Says Yes!**

"_No bloody way_" was Rose's reaction when she caught wind of the headline one morning at the studio.

"_What the hell_?" was Scorpius' reaction when his coworker mentioned Ella was officially off the market at work a few days later.

Rose sat in the recording room alone and stunned.

Scorpius went in search for Albus.

"_What the hell, mate_?" Scorpius snapped, throwing the paper at his friend in the break room.

Albus picked up the paper and glanced down at the headline. "Gertrude's cauldrons are 50% off," he read, looking up. "Sorry, did you want them to be 60% off?"

Scorpius glared at him. "_You got engaged and didn't tell me_?"

Albus cringed, looking further down the page at the article about him and Ella. "I'm sorry," he sighed. "I know things are weird between you and Ella right now and in my defense, I was not expecting the press to pick up on this as quickly as they did."

"_That's _your bloody defense?"

"I never said it was a good one!"

Scorpius was strongly considering strangling his so-called friend. "Maybe things are weird between me and Ella but why does that mean they have to be weird for you and me, too?"

Albus hesitated.

"_Well_?" Scorpius demanded.

"Because," he murmured, "I don't think she's wrong."

He blinked. "What?"

"About why you're considering the America job."

Scorpius' lips pursed. "You mean about why I _took_ the America job," he corrected for after stewing over Ella's accusations overnight, he charged into his boss' office first thing the next morning and said yes to the job.

Albus' mouth parted. "You…you accepted the job?" he asked, dumbfounded.

"Starts the first week in January. And it looks like I have a hell of a lot more people than just Rose I'm running away from now," he sneered before turning on his heel and storming out.

"So you admit you're running away from Rose then?" Albus called after him but all he got in return was the middle finger.

That night, after a long day of seething, Scorpius let out the smallest sighs of relief when he arrived home. What he really needed was a night of solitude, away from the judging faces of his friends.

What he got was Adrienne standing outside his apartment door.

"Adrienne," he said, surprised. "Hey."

"So your best mate and coworker got engaged and you didn't think to tell me?" Adrienne asked curiously, holding up the paper in her hands.

Scorpius pulled out his keys and unlocked the door. "I would have told you had I actually known about it," he muttered, ushering her in.

Her eyebrow dipped down. "What?"

He tossed his keys on to the hook and stripped his jacket off. "Neither of them told me."

Adrienne's mouth dropped open. "Why the hell not?"

Scorpius wasn't sure he wanted to get into it but it was too late to go back now. "Because Ella and I are currently not speaking to each other and apparently that means Albus and I aren't speaking to each other either."

He shuffled into the kitchen, searching around for the wine opener. Finding it near the sink, he grabbed it plus a bottle of Merlot and two glasses and returned to the living room where Adrienne was making herself comfortable on the couch.

"What happened between you and Ella?" Adrienne asked as she grabbed the two glasses out of Scorpius' hands and placed them on the coffee table.

He stared at the bottle of wine in his hands but didn't open it immediately, a small amount of guilt suddenly fluttering around in his heart. "There's something I need tell you, Adrienne," he spoke softly.

Skepticism appeared in her eyes. "Why don't I like the sound of that?"

He busied himself with opening the bottle of wine and when he couldn't stall any longer, said, "Do you remember when I told you about the temporary assignment I had in America a few years back?"

Puzzled, she said, "Yes."

"Well, they offered me another temporary assignment starting in January and I said yes."

Adrienne stared at him, her eyes unchanging as she replayed his words in her head. "How long will you be gone for?"

"A year," he said softly.

She blinked a few times as she let that sink in before saying, "And you said yes."

He nodded solemnly. "I know I should have talked about it with you, but-"

"But you didn't," she whispered. Reaching for the open wine bottle, she poured herself a glass and took a large gulp. "And the sad thing is, I'm not at all surprised."

Scorpius' brow furrowed. "What does that mean?"

She took another sip of her wine, looking anywhere but at him. "Albus and Ella have been seeing each other for twelve months and they're engaged," she murmured. "You and I have been seeing each other for almost the same amount of time and you take a job across the Atlantic without even speaking to me about it first."

He stared at her. "If you're looking for a proposal from me, you might be waiting a while. I'm not sure I'm the marrying type."

"I'm not looking for a proposal!" she groaned. "I'm looking for you to _care_."

"I care," he defended. "Of course I care, Adrienne."

She frowned. "Maybe a part of you does," she spoke softly. "But the other part already has one foot out the door."

"Adrienne-"

"You're not invested in this relationship," she croaked out, shaking her head at him. "I don't think you ever really were."

He gaped at her. "That's not true, Adrienne," he pleaded. "This job just means a lot to me."

"And I don't?"

Guilt swelled up inside his heart. "I didn't say that," he pleaded. "I care about you, Adrienne. So much. Being with you is fun and easy and I can't remember a time that I've been happier."

She said nothing at first, staring at him as the weight of his words buried them both in tense silence.

"You care about me," she whispered. "But you don't love me."

No. He didn't.

"I…I just need more time," he pleaded.

Her bottom lip trembled. "If I thought giving you more time would work, I would do it," she whispered, blinking back unsuspecting tears. "But your heart belongs to someone else. It always has, Scorpius. It probably always will."

He didn't have to ask her who he was referring to. "No," he murmured, shaking his head. "I-I can't love her anymore."

"You _can't_ love her anymore," she repeated in a half-whisper, "But that doesn't mean you don't."

"No, I just…" he trailed off, his expression turning wildly desperate as he struggled to find the right words to say. "You're the one that I want."

A faraway look of skepticism flickered in Ella's dark eyes. "No," she murmured. "I'm just the one that you want to want."

He wanted to tell her he didn't understand.

Problem was, he did.

"It's okay, Scorpius," she spoke softly, picking herself off the couch. "I'm upset and maybe a little hurt but I'm not surprised."

He opened his mouth to defend himself, to plead with her, to fix things between them.

And yet nothing came out.

Because they both knew she wasn't wrong. He wanted to want her. He wanted to choose her. He wanted her to be the one he got to be with.

But his heart wanted someone else.

She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "I hope you find what you're looking for in America," she whispered. "But don't be surprised if what you're looking for has been here all along."

And with that, she was gone.

And so, too, was Scorpius' last hope of not ending up alone.


	5. How It Didn't Work Out

**LOOK TO THE STARS**

By ByeByeBirdie

Chapter 5: How It Didn't Work Out

* * *

"You…banned him from the wedding?"

"Not in so many words," Rose muttered.

"But he's your best friend."

"The fuck he is."

Chad's eyebrow popped upward for it was rare to hear Rose curse. "Okay, let's back up," he said, reaching up to rub his temples. "What the hell happened between you and Al?"

Like Rose could tell Chad that her supposed best friend didn't approve of her soon-to-be husband. "I'm just tired of him sticking his nose where it doesn't belong."

When she said nothing more, Chad sighed. "And exactly where is that?"

"It doesn't matter," she muttered.

"You just kicked the Man of Honor out of the wedding. Seems to me that should matter a little."

Rose met the concern in her fiancé's face. "No, you know what matters?" she countered, offering him a small smile. "You and me and this upcoming wedding. I don't want to think about anything else going on in my life right now but that."

Because maybe then she wouldn't feel so uneasy about all of it.

Chad paused. "Your best friend should be there, Rose."

"I thought we already established that Albus Potter is, in fact, not my best friend."

"Rose-"

"Please, Chad," she whispered, shaking her head at him. "I don't want to talk about him. I don't want to think about him. I don't even want to say his name. You just have to trust me on this."

Chad still looked wary but knew Rose enough to know that if he didn't drop the subject, he would suddenly be the one she'd be angry with.

Over the next two weeks, it seemed like Rose spent all of her time with her friends and family organizing every last detail of the wedding. She liked being busy but there came a point where she found herself missing the studio and her songs and her lyrics, longing for more than floral arrangements and cummerbund choices.

"Flowers are being delivered at one o'clock, the caterers will be arriving shortly after, and the musicians will be there promptly two hours before the ceremony," Rose's mother prattled on. "We have the bridal suite starting at 9 AM on Saturday so hair and makeup will start around then. Photographer will-"

"At 9 in the morning?" Rose interrupted, gaping at her. "The ceremony is at six. What am I going to do for _nine hours_?"

"Why, get ready of course," her mother chuckled. "There are a lot of details to think about, Rose. It's a big day."

"I didn't realize it was _that _big."

Her mother's eyebrow popped up. "You're getting married. Of course it's a big day."

She sighed. "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant I didn't realize I'd be spending nine hours in hair and makeup, that's all."

Her mother looked at her, frowning curiously. Is everything okay with you?"

"Of course," she drawled. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Her mother placed her notebook on the coffee table in front of her. "You just seem a little..." she trailed off, searching for the right word, "On edge."

Rose sighed. Apparently she wasn't hiding her restlessness well. "I'm not on edge. I just feel like so much of my time right now is focusing on this wedding and I can't remember the last time I was in the studio or when I last picked up my notebook of lyrics or even the last time I just sang in the shower. I guess I just miss it," she murmured for the only time she ever felt truly comfortable was with that lyric notebook in one hand and a quill in another.

Hermione reached for her daughter's hand. "I know how important your career is to you, Rose. But you have a lifetime of music ahead of you. You only get married once."

There was an unexpected jolt deep inside her heart at those last words. As blunt and true as they were, it hadn't really hit her until that very moment that in less than two weeks, she'd be walking down that aisle, saying 'I do,' pronouncing her undying love to one special guy in front of her family and friends and it would be (well, should be anyway) her only chance to do so. She only got married once. This was it. So shouldn't she be more excited about it?

And shouldn't she be excited about the idea of becoming someone's wife? Of one day having a child with that someone? Maybe more than one child? Of sharing a life with that someone? Growing old with that someone.

Her mother said she had a lifetime of music ahead of her but she also had a lifetime of marriage.

It all should have filled her heart with overwhelming love and hope.

Instead, it just filled her heart with butterflies.

"Rose," her mother whispered when she said nothing. "Are you getting cold feet?"

Rose pushed away the panic that was starting to spread through her veins and shook her head. "No, of course not," she pleaded. "Chad is perfect in every way. He makes me laugh every time we're together, his voice melts my heart, he's thoughtful and charming and romantic and he treats me like a princess. I want to marry him. Why shouldn't I want to marry him?"

Her mother grew quiet as she replayed her daughter's words in her mind. "You say he's perfect and that you want to marry him," she spoke softly, "But I didn't hear you say that you actually love him."

Shock filled Rose's gaze. "Of course I love him," she spoke, perhaps a bit desperately. "Or I wouldn't be doing this. I wouldn't be marrying him. Please, Mum, don't overthink it."

Her mother looked unconvinced but just nodded. "Well, why don't we have a girls' night?" her mother suggested in hopes of erasing the wariness in her daughter's eyes. "Invite your aunts and your cousins over for a night of champagne and wedding day stories and marriage advice. If they can't get you excited then I can't imagine anything will."

"Oh, c'mon, Mum, I _am_ excited," she groaned. "It's just a lot to take in right now. I never knew how much detail went into planning."

"Then you could use a night off from it," her mother responded. "It's settled. I'm giving you a girls' night."

While Rose's mother arranged a night for Rose to be surrounded by her many female family members, Scorpius just spent the next two weeks completely alone.

He thought maybe he was better off. He thought maybe he could survive the holidays moderately unscathed and slink off to America in hopes of just being forgotten so he, too, could forget. Being alone didn't have to be a bad thing. He had spent most of his life isolating himself from others so maybe it was time to just accept the quiet, unassuming life he could have, the one that he had once craved so greatly. There was a time he had wanted to be invisible. So maybe this was his chance to be invisible.

But if he was finally getting all the things he thought he wanted, then why did it seem to hurt so much?

A week before Christmas, Scorpius made an unexpected visit home and told his father about the temporary American assignment. He seemed to have the exact same reaction that Ella did.

"And Adrienne's okay with this?"

Scorpius sighed. "Doesn't matter if she is or not seeing as we aren't together anymore."

Draco looked at his son, surprised. "Oh" was all he said. "Sorry to hear that."

Scorpius just shrugged as he sipped his goblin wine. "It's okay. Wasn't meant to be I guess."

"I don't know about that. Seemed like you two really liked each other," Draco mused.

"We did," he murmured. "It just wasn't …"

When he said nothing more, Draco pressed on. "It just wasn't what? Right? Enough?"

Scorpius found a sudden interest in the rug before saying, "It just wasn't love."

An unreadable expression appeared on his father's face as he looked over at his son.

"What?" Scorpius sighed, recognizing that his father was holding back from saying something.

"I just…" he trailed off, struggling to find the right words to say. With a sad sigh, he quickly said, "I just don't want you to be afraid of love the way I always was."

Scorpius was surprised and yet saddened by those words for even he could see that his father had come a long way over the years. But Scorpius also knew that Draco Malfoy preferred solitude to almost anything else and that would probably never really change. "I'm not afraid of love, Dad," he murmured. Hesitating, he sighed, "Well, maybe I am, but it's not because of you. It's because once upon a time, I got in way over my head—no, actually, I got in way over my _heart_ and by the time I crawled my way out of it, there was very little left to salvage. And I'm still paying for it today."

He could feel his father's scrutinizing eyes on him even though his own eyes stared at the rug. "The Weasley girl?"

Scorpius said nothing but the slight wince that appeared on his face exposed the answer.

"May I ask," his father spoke softly, "What happened between you two?"

He felt an ache in his heart he thought he had long moved away from. But apparently not. "I guess I wasn't the only one who shied away from love," he whispered.

His father's eyebrow shot up. "You loved her?"

Scorpius said nothing.

"Did she love you?"

He glanced up to meet the curiosity in his father's stare with a sigh. "She didn't know how to love me," he answered truthfully. "Or maybe she just didn't want to."

His father paused. "Why not?"

Silence followed until - "I'm a Malfoy, Dad" was all he said.

But it was enough to break his father's heart. "You two were friends for years," he said, confused. "You being a Malfoy never seemed to stop her before."

"Yeah, well it did the moment I told her she was so much more than just a friend to me," he muttered irritably. "Suddenly, our differences became very apparent."

His father clinked the glass around in his near-empty firewhisky glass. "To you?" he said hesitantly. "Or to her?"

"Does it matter?" Scorpius scoffed in a rather desperate fashion.

His father grew quiet, his brow furrowing as he pondered their conversation. "You say she was the one who made you fearful of love. But it sounds like you were just as fearful back then."

"What the hell does that mean?" Scorpius snapped.

"It means," he said softly, his eyes not straying from his son's, "That perhaps she wasn't the only one who didn't fight for your relationship the night you went your separate ways."

His heart tightened and he just shook his head defiantly. "There was nothing to fight for anymore," he growled. "And I really didn't come here to talk about Rose, okay? I don't even know why you care. It's not like you haven't made your less than favorable opinion about their family very clear over the years."

Draco let out a quiet sigh, knowing that his son wasn't wrong. But he saw the pain and the heartache in his son's eyes and knew that he would do just about anything to make it go away. "I will never be on friendly terms with the Potters or the Weasleys. But that does not mean I expect the same from you," he spoke, his voice unexpectedly tender, "I know that this is probably hypocritical and perhaps a bit ironic coming from me, but all I want is for you to be happy. And if that's with Rose, then-"

"It's not," he spoke coolly before his father could continue. "Am I the only one who seems to remember that Rose is getting married this weekend? To someone who isn't me, by the way."

His father said nothing and Scorpius used that time to drain the rest of the wine in his glass before abruptly standing up and saying, "I have to go, Dad. Thanks for the talk."

Draco tried to protest but Scorpius ignored him, strolling out of the study without another word.

Why was it that during a time when Scorpius was trying to forget about Rose the most was the same time that everyone else seemed to want to talk about her?

Meanwhile, all anyone wanted to talk to Rose about was Albus. And she was having none of it.

"Our wedding is in _two days_, Rose," Chad said the Thursday before they were scheduled to wed. "And I think you'll really regret not having Albus there."

"I won't," she muttered. "And believe me, Chad, you don't want him there either."

Chad seemed confused by those words. "Why not?"

She just shook her head and said, "I have to go meet up with my family at my mother's in a few minutes. Can we please table this conversation?"

"That insinuates you want to discuss at a later date," he pointed out as she headed towards his front door. "Any chance you could tell me when that date might be?"

"I change my mind. How about we just dump the conversation altogether?" she growled as she reached for her jacket and purse.

He walked into the foyer after her. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

She raised her eyebrow at him. "My patience?"

He rolled his eyes and reached out to grab her arm and drag her towards him. "I was more thinking along the lines of a goodbye kiss," he teased, wrapping his arms around her tightly.

She smiled and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. "I'll see you tomorrow for the rehearsal, okay?"

Before he could bring up Albus again, she quickly disappeared out the front door.

She stood outside her parents' front door for a few uninterrupted minutes, needing just a moment of quiet solitude. She had been in complete wedding overdrive for the past few weeks and was suddenly hitting a breaking point of sheer exhaustion she hadn't even realized existed until that very moment. She knew waiting for her beyond the front door were her aunts and her grandmother and her female cousins, all there for a congratulatory champagne toast and a night of fun marriage and wedding stories in honor of her. And for some reason, Rose was dreading the very idea of being the center of attention.

"Er…you gonna knock on that door anytime soon?"

Rose jumped as Molly came up behind her. "How bad is tonight going to be?" Rose groaned.

Molly just laughed, not recognizing the sincerity in the question. "Tonight isn't supposed to be bad, it's supposed to be relaxing."

"It would only be relaxing if we were actually going to take a break from talking about wedding details, the same details we've _been _talking about for months now. I mean, surely a group of strong, confident women can find more to talk about than color palettes and floral arrangements and string quartets," she groaned.

Molly seemed to either not pick up or ignore the tension in her cousin's voice as she wrapped her arm around her cousin's shoulder and said, "Maybe we'll discuss some political issues next week. But tonight is all about you, Rosie."

For a famous singer accustomed to the spotlight, she sure wished it wasn't on her now.

But she forced a smile on her face and walked through the door.

The night hadn't started off as bad as she had been expecting. While wedding details certainly made their way into conversation, the early banter mostly centered around the upcoming holidays and the ever-growing Weasley family. But Rose should have known that they wouldn't avoid the subject of her wedding for long.

"Don't forget, we'll have another honorary Weasley at our annual Christmas Eve Feast," Rose's grandmother said, offering her granddaughter a grin.

"Yeah, I know, how crazy is it that James has actually settled down long enough to have a relationship?" Rose said with a teasing grin.

"As strange and unexpected as that is," Rose's mother said, "I don't think Alaina is who Molly was referring to."

"You forget that Chad has been coming to the Weasley Christmas Eve Feast for the past two years," Rose reminded her mother.

"As your boyfriend," Molly teased, elbowing her playfully in the side. "This year, he'll be your husband."

"I knew we should have planned our honeymoon during the holidays instead of waiting for January," she muttered to herself, the edges of her lip turned upward in slight amusement.

Laughter filled the room and the conversation turned to past honeymoon disasters but it wasn't long before the conversation got once again rerouted to Rose's wedding.

"I heard you picked up your dress last week," her Aunt Audrey said. "That must have been very exciting."

"Er…yeah," Rose said with a smile. "Very."

"I remember the night I picked up my dress," Aunt Angelina reminisced. "I couldn't stop staring at it."

"I couldn't stop wearing mine," Molly admitted with a sheepish grin. "I found myself trying it on each night before bed."

"Oh, me too!" Lucy laughed.

"Anytime Teddy wasn't around, I did the exact same thing," Victoire admitted. "I guess that's a natural occurrence."

Rose hadn't even looked at her dress since she picked it up from the shop.

"Do you know how many times I shined my engagement ring leading up to my wedding?" Molly chuckled with a slight shake of the head. "Merlin, every night I'd be there with polish trying to make it somehow sparkle even more than it already did."

"I still do that!" Lucy giggled, earning her nods of agreement from the rest of the married folk.

Rose barely even spent time looking at her engagement ring.

"Have you and Chad been practicing your first dance together?" Victoire asked her cousin. "Merlin, I was so nervous about mine. I'm not exactly known for my dancing abilities. Hell, Teddy's a better dancer than I am."

"Oh, I'm sure Rose and Chad will be fine," Lily argued. "Those two definitely know how to move to music seeing as they're up on stage doing it all the time."

Rose couldn't even remember which song they chose for their first dance.

And she felt as if a string quartet was stuffy and old-fashioned.

The venue seemed impersonal.

The guest list was far larger than she had ever wanted.

She didn't even like chocolate cake.

Burgundy and cream were two very boring colors.

And what kind of wedding could it possibly be when her best friend wouldn't be standing there beside her, grinning goofily to match her own overenthusiastic smile?

She couldn't remember the last time she genuinely smiled about anything to do with the wedding.

At that moment, the only thing she felt like doing was crying.

And in that moment, she knew. She knew in the very bottom of her heart, that same heart she had kept hidden from her own self for so long, that there was a reason she wasn't happy about any of this.

And she could no longer ignore it.

That night, she knocked on the one person's door who knew what she had been feeling even when she hadn't wanted to see it herself.

"Rose," Albus greeted when he opened the door, stunned. "What are you doing here?"

That was an incredibly loaded question, one she wasn't sure she had an easy answer to.

She opened her mouth to tell him she didn't know, but what came out was a jumbled of mixed emotions, all that sparked tears inside her eyes. "Chad is one of the best people I know," she blurted out, her voice trembling with every word. "He's loyal and he's kind and he's honest and he has this emotional side that makes my heart melt and he can make me laugh with a simple knock-knock joke and he makes me feel like I can do anything and his voice is magical and singing with him makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world and he loves me, he _really_ loves me with every piece of his heart and being with him is so easy, too easy sometimes but considering the complicated life I've led, I love that about him. I love everything about him."

Albus gaped at her, recognizing the guilt in every word she spoke. He saw the tears flickering in her eyes and the unobtrusive reluctance in her gaze and he couldn't help but ask, "So…what's the problem?"

The problem was he wasn't Scorpius.

Chad was the type of person hearts melted for, he just wasn't the guy her heart melted for.

Maybe Chad was the easy choice, the sensible choice, the rational choice, but he wasn't her heart's choice. No, her heart had already been given to someone else long before Chad came along. And that someone else still had it.

And she couldn't let her head dictate who and how she got to love anymore.

There was a reason she had stopped being able to write beautiful music, a reason she felt so lost and confused in her lyrics. A reason she had gone through so many writers blocks, a reason something just didn't feel right. She had closed off her heart the moment she let herself say goodbye to the one and only person she ever really loved, too afraid to listen to what it might have to say. She was still afraid. But she couldn't force herself to love the wrong person just because everything else about him felt right.

Just like she couldn't force herself not to love the right person just because everything else about him felt wrong.

Especially when nothing about him felt wrong at all.

A tear slowly slid down her cheek, closely followed by another until they all spilled out and the world in front of her blurred into a hazy mess of distortions.

And yet for the first time in a long time, she was finally seeing things clearly.

No words could form, her head too much of a jumbled mess of chaos and confusion and overwhelming guilt and heartbreak. In replace of words came nothing but tears. The sobs spilled from her lips and she buried her face in her hands, finally breaking down the fragile wall around her heart that she had always been so afraid to infiltrate.

Albus stood there, shocked as his cousin fell down a hole of emotional turmoil, and though eh stood there, dumbfounded for longer than he cared to admit, eventually he strolled over to her and pulled her into a tight embrace, ignoring all of his surprise and concern, and told her over and over again that everything was going to be okay. Neither knew if that was true but they both felt comforted by the words anyway.

Rose eventually stepped out of his embrace and wiped the stray tears from her cheeks. Looking into the concern in her cousin's eyes, she just said, "Thanks for being there for me, Al. I don't always deserve it but I appreciate it nonetheless."

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. "Hey, we may have our share of fights from time to time but I'm never going anywhere. I'll always be right here. You can't get rid of me that easily, Rose Weasley."

She felt herself froze at his choice of words, slowly turning to face him. "What did you just say?"

He saw the shock and awe in her eyes as confusion filled his own. "Er…you can't get rid of me that easily?"

And suddenly, she was transported back in time to all the moments she and Scorpius had once said that to each other, sometimes in jest and sometimes in sincerity. Because he had been there through it all. When she was stressed out at school and then stressed out in life, struggling to figure out who she wanted to be. She hated the job she was working at, spending all of her time at open mics just hoping that one day she'd have the courage to stand on a real stage. And the only reason that that day had ever come was because of Scorpius, pushing her to go after a dream she had been to afraid to go after herself. Every song that had made it big, and even the ones that didn't, were about him. When everything seemed to be going wrong in her life, he was there to make it all feel right. Because at the end of whatever horrible day she might have been having, he was there to welcome her with a smile. And all she had ever really needed in her life was that smile.

But instead of just telling him that, instead of listening to her heart in a moment she had so desperately needed to listen to it, she listened to her fears instead. And it took Scorpius away from her forever.

Ten months later she had realized what she had been too afraid to realize ten months earlier, but it was too late by then. He was gone and all she could pretend to do was say goodbye.

But she never really let him go. A piece of him stayed in her heart forever, buried away like a small wanton ache that somehow grew over time with more appreciation and adoration for all he had done for her. And she wished she could go back in time and tell him the very first time he told her that he loved her that she loved him, too. But she couldn't go back in time, she could only move forward. And maybe it wouldn't be with him but it couldn't be with Chad either.

"I can't marry Chad," she blurted out.

Albus' mouth parted. "What?"

She blinked the threat of tears away. "I can't marry him."

Albus' eyes widened slightly at the implication. "Why not?" he prodded.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned away from him. "Because," she whispered, "He's not Scorpius."

Later, as she stood outside Chad's apartment door, she could already feel the tears pooling in the back of her eyelids. She knew she was about to have an incredibly difficult conversation, one that she knew would wind up hurting Chad and therefore, herself, but she couldn't live a lie anymore. He deserved better than that and frankly, so did she.

Knowing that she had no choice, she knocked on the door.

"Rose," he greeted when he opened the door, a smile on his face. "What are you-"

"Chad."

He froze, recognizing the desperate grief in the simple word. He looked at her, his mouth parting, but said nothing. Too afraid to say something.

"I'm…" she trailed off as she tried to blink back the tears. "I'm so sorry."

A lump formed in his throat as he stood there staring at her. He said nothing, the silence dragging on for seconds and then minutes until it was almost too much to bear. Eventually he spoke, his voice trembling as he choked out his words in a hoarse whisper. "You can't marry me, can you."

It wasn't a question.

A tear slid down her cheek. "I want to," she pleaded. "Good Godric, you are the perfect man in every meaning of the word. I want to put on that dress and stand up in front of all of our friends and family and devote my life to you."

A long silence followed, one that filled Rose's already aching heart with so much guilt.

He finally spoke, his voice full of heartbreak. "But you can't," he whispered. "Because your heart is devoted to someone else."

A tear slid down her face. "I wish it wasn't."

He turned away from her, the pain in his heart nearly too much to bear. "Yeah," he muttered. "Me, too."

"Chad-"

"Don't," he pleaded, holding up his hand. He said nothing and neither did she, the truth sinking deeply into their broken hearts. The silence dragged on once again, the tension rising, until finally, Chad dared himself to look at the girl he loved.

"Truth be told," he croaked out, "I've been waiting years for you to have this conversation with me."

Tears filled her eyes as she took a step towards him. "Chad-"

He cut her off by taking a sharp step backward and shaking his head at her. "We don't need to do this," he muttered. "I don't need an explanation. I already know it. I've known for a while. Maybe I've known all along. The truth was staring me blatantly in the face. I just didn't want to see it."

She felt guilty and desperate, wishing she had any sort of explanation that could help ease his pain but her mind came up blank. He seemed to know what she was thinking or feeling without her having to say it and that somehow made it so much worse.

"Why didn't you say no?" he whispered.

She looked at him cautiously. "What?"

His eyes filled with regret. "When I asked you to marry me, why didn't you just say no then?" he begged, his voice laced with desperation. "Why couldn't you have just said no?"

Her heart broke for him. "Because I loved you, Chad," she pleaded. "I still do."

He turned away from her, his head shaking just slightly, so slightly it was almost inconspicuous, from side to side. "I'm just not the one you're _in _love with," he murmured, mostly to himself.

Shame burrowed its way into her already breaking heart. "I never meant to hurt you," she choked out.

Slowly, he turned to look at her.

Or maybe he just looked through her. "People always say that," he whispered, "Right before they go and hurt someone."

"Chad-"

"Please go," he begged, swiftly turning away from her once again.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. "_I'm sorry_."

He took another step back, his hand on the door. "Why should you be sorry? You're just being honest," he spoke and there was a heavy detection of bitterness there. "I just wish you were honest from the start."

"Chad-"

But he wouldn't let her get in the last word, shutting the door on her and on their relationship.

Rose stood outside of Chad's door with only her guilt to keep her company. The tears kept coming, the silence of the hallway suddenly more palpable than ever. It hadn't been a long conversation, it hadn't much of a conversation at all, but it drained her of all feeling and emotion for all Chad had ever done was love her and she had repaid him by breaking his heart.

It was late, nearing midnight, when Rose finally found the will to move her legs, though they certainly felt as heavy as lead. As she made her way out of Chad's building, she stopped short for the very idea of heading to her quiet home that would only force reminders of Chad on her sounded like quite possibly the last thing she wanted.

So it came as no surprise to her when she found herself knocking on Albus' front door for a second time that night.

He seemed unexpectedly alert when he answered the door dressed in his bathrobe. He took one look at her and said, "I thought you might be back."

Tears brimmed in her eyes and fell down her cheeks as she fell into the arms of her cousin. He held her tightly, saying nothing, as she allowed herself to cry over the mistakes she made with Chad.

And the mistakes she made with her own heart.

Nothing more was said that night. She awoke early the next morning on Albus' couch. For a brief moment, she wondered what she was doing there. But barely a second passed before the previous night came rushing back to her and the quiet tears reappeared in the bottom of her eyes.

She knew she had done the right thing. But that didn't mean she didn't feel guilty about it.

"Coffee?"

Rose practically jumped, turning her head to the sound of her cousin's voice. "No, I'm already jittery enough as it is," she murmured, shaking her head. She tossed the blanket off of her and pulled herself off the couch, stretching her stiff arms over her shoulders. "I should get going anyway."

"What are you going to do now?"

She sighed. "Is it completely pathetic if I go home and bury myself under the covers in my bed as I cry my eyes out for the entire weekend?"

He paused. "Pathetic, no," he spoke hesitantly. "Unreasonable, perhaps."

"Why?" she whined. "Can't I get one weekend to myself before the press eats me alive?"

"It's not the press you have to worry about," he murmured. "It's our family."

Rose's face blanched. "Oh, fuck," she whispered breathlessly.

Facing the truth herself was hard enough was it was. But telling her parents and her cousins who had spent so much time on planning a wedding day that would now never happen seemed unbearable.

"They're all just sitting around now with their cups of coffee wondering what to wear to tonight's rehearsal dinner," Rose moaned, burying her face in her hands. "How do I tell him there's not going to be a rehearsal dinner? How do I tell them there's not going to be a _wedding_?"

Albus pulled her hands away from her face. "How about I do it for you?" he suggested softly.

Rose met his gaze. "You would do that?"

He shrugged. "We both know our family can be a bit…" he trailed off.

"Overbearing?" Rose drawled. "Blunt? Crass? Judgmental?"

He offered her a lopsided smile. "To name a few," he said sheepishly. "Might be best if someone other than you dropped the bomb in their laps. They'll still bombard you but perhaps they'll be a bit more composed then."

"Doubtful," Rose sighed. Pausing, she said, "What are you going to tell them?"

"That you are madly in love with the son of your father's school rival and the two of you are flying off to Canada to elope."

Rose stared at him, unamused. "Why am I getting married in Canada of all places?"

He chuckled but it died out quickly thereafter. "What do you want me to tell them, Rose?"

She looked at him, the many answers to the loaded question running through her mind. "The truth," she whispered. "That I love Chad. I'm just not in love with him."

He offered her a sad smile. "Then that's what I'll tell them."

It came as absolutely no surprise to Rose that her apartment became a revolving door of relatives all day. All of them claimed to just want to make sure she was okay but she knew them well enough to know that they wanted details. And she told them nothing. She couldn't. Telling Albus that her heart still belonged to someone else was one thing. Telling the rest of her family was another. None of them could possibly understand, nor did she expect them to when she barely understood it herself.

"Just tell me this," her mother asked when Rose opened the door to find her standing on the other side, "Are you okay?"

The tears welled up in Rose's eyes and for the first time in a long time, she fell into her mother's comforting arms and cried her eyes out.

"I'm sorry about all that wasted planning and money," Rose whispered later as they gathered on the couch.

"Oh, Rose," she said, reaching over to brush a strand of hair from her daughter's face. "I don't care about any of that. I would rather go completely bankrupt before you marry someone who doesn't feel right to you. I know you may not think so right now but you're doing the right thing."

She knew it was the right thing to do, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt. "Tell that to Chad," Rose whispered.

Her mother finally left her apartment just as the sun was setting and Rose immediately went into the kitchen and opened a large bottle of wine. She glanced at the wine glasses, wondering if she should just skip straight to drinking from the bottle before realizing that might be the height of pathetic. Pouring herself a glass, almost to the brim, she wandered back into her living room and wandered over to the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out just as the blue sky turned to pink and purple. Once upon a time, she might have felt a sort of peace and tranquility in the sunset. But in that moment she just felt nothing.

Albus stopped by a few hours later, just as she had expected him to. He talked so she wouldn't have to, telling her about each of the relatives he tracked down in order to give them the news, their various reactions, and informing her that her parents were going to take care of canceling the arrangements much to her relief.

"So where's your 'I told you so?'" Rose eventually muttered into her wine glass.

Albus' one eyebrow shot up. "Excuse me?"

"You were right," she said bluntly. "About everything. About me not being into the wedding plans, me being scared and me panicking, me being with Chad because it was easy. So c'mon, say it. Say 'I told you so, Rose.'"

He frowned. "I was never looking to be proven right, Rose," he spoke softly. "I just wanted to make sure you were doing what you wanted, not what you thought you should want."

What she wanted was to go to sleep and wake up in a year when all of this was behind her.

"So," he said, clearing his throat, "What are you going to do about Scorpius?"

Rose's brow furrowed. "What do you mean, what am I going to do?"

He shot her a look. "You have feelings for him, Rose. Maybe you even still love him. You can't honestly tell me you're not going to do anything about it."

She frowned, finding a sudden interest in her near-empty glass of wine. "There's nothing I can do," she murmured. "Just because I realized that I didn't love Chad nearly as much as I once loved Scorpius doesn't mean I plan to suddenly interfere with Scorpius' life."

Albus gaped at her. "_That's exactly what it should mean_."

She shook her head. "I can't do that," she whispered. "He's happy with someone else and I don't want to ruin that. He deserves to be-"

"Except that he's no longer with that someone else."

Rose froze. "What?"

He shrugged. "He and Adrienne broke up last week."

Rose was stunned, staring at her cousin in shock and curiosity. She wanted to believe that the stars were aligning, that maybe this was fate.

Only she knew it wasn't.

She might have broken up with Chad because of Scorpius but never once had it occurred to her to go after Scorpius. In the end, this wasn't about him. It was about her and how she had been going after all the right things for all the wrong reasons. Albus was right, maybe a part of her still had strong feelings for Scorpius. Maybe her heart still yearned for him, maybe she was still so much in love with him. And maybe there was no maybe about it.

But right now, she was still mourning over the abrupt end to her relationship with Chad. It might have been her decision, and perhaps her best decision in all of their time together, but it was still painful to know that she had broken someone's heart two days before their wedding day just because she had been too afraid to listen to her own for so many years.

Chad wasn't what she needed. But she wasn't so sure that Scorpius was either. Maybe what she really needed was to be alone for a while.

"I broke off my engagement to an incredible man two days before I was supposed to marry him," she spoke softly. "Give me some time to deal with that."

"I would except that Scorpius is leaving for America in less than a week so time is not on your side, Rose."

She froze again, only this time her heart stopped, too. "What?" she croaked out.

"He took another yearlong assignment in America," Albus spoke, almost desperately. "He leaves the day after Christmas."

Her thoughts somehow went blank as she tried wrapping her head around the blunt truth that in a week, Scorpius would once again be gone.

But then again, how was that different from now?

He wasn't hers to long for, wasn't hers to love. He was never hers to begin with. She had watched him walk away four years earlier and she had done nothing to stop him. That was the moment she had lost him, not now. Their story ended in that hallway when he got on that elevator and Rose didn't. She couldn't rewrite history and she couldn't predict the future. All she could do was hope that one day her heart might not hurt so much.

"Maybe it's for the best," she murmured into her wine glass. "I think we both could benefit from being alone for a while."

Frustration filled Albus' expression. "Oh, you have got to be bloody kidding me," he drawled. "You've had four years apart! Are you really just going to let more time go by?"

She shook her head at him almost defiantly. "I broke up with Chad _yesterday_, Al," she pleaded.

"Yeah, because of Scorpius!" he groaned. He grabbed the wine glass out of Rose's hand, much to her protest, and pointed to her front door. "_Go after him_."

She shook her head. "I can't," she pleaded. "I can't do this again, Al. Don't you get that? Today has been unbearable. It's been painful and tragic and heartbreaking and agonizing. I can't stop crying, I can't stop feeling guilty, can't stop feeling like I failed Chad and I failed myself. _I can't go through this again_. My heart hurts too much. Everything hurts. I just want…"

"You just want what?" he asked softly. "Tell me, Rose. What is it that you want right now?"

She felt the tears collecting in the back of her eyes and she swiftly shut them, trying to block out the pain. "I just want to feel like the real me again."

She could hear a deep sigh fall from her cousin's lips though her eyes were shut and now buried in her hands. "Yeah, and exactly when do you think you stopped feeling that way, Rose?" he spoke, the implication heavy in his tone.

Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at Albus, the very obvious reason resting in every bit of her heart.

The moment Scorpius walked away was the moment Rose lost so much of herself.

Since that moment, it had been a struggle of muddled emotions between her heart and her head. She had never felt like the best version of herself, not like she used to. Her lyrics used to come so easily to her and at some point over the years, they stopped. They felt forced and superficial and she had blamed it on stress but she knew in the deepest part of her veins that it had always been her heart's way of telling her that something wasn't right. She could put on the smile and flaunt her success and walk arm-in-arm with the perfect boyfriend, but nothing about any of it was perfect. It was far from it. She had just been too afraid to see it.

And she still was.

"I'm supposed to be getting married tomorrow, Al," she whispered, shaking her head. "Now is not the time to be thinking of some other guy."

His lips pursed. "Or perhaps it's the best time."

She swiftly shook her head again. "Timing was never on our side," she murmured. "We come from two different worlds and those worlds haven't changed at all in the last four years."

Albus' stare bore through hers. "You can't honestly tell me you're hesitating because his last name is Malfoy and yours is Weasley," he practically seethed. "That hadn't stopped you from being friends with the guy so don't you dare let that come between you two now."

She was splitting hairs and he could see right through her. Scorpius' last name of course meant nothing to her. Maybe it meant something to the rest of the world but she had never been one to care about their thoughts and opinions. Even if she was famous and had a reputation to uphold, if she lost fans because they might be in outrage over a simple last name, she wouldn't feel much at loss over that. This wasn't about Scorpius' name. It was about everything else.

"There's nothing coming between us," she spoke softly. "Because there is no us. There never really was. Please, Al. Just...please let me do this my way."

"Do what?" he mumbled. "You're not even doing anything."

She glared at him.

Albus sighed and reluctantly handed back her wine glass. "I just want you to be happy," he murmured. "And I think he's the only person who's ever really been able to give you that."

She met the guilt in his eyes. "Do you care about me and Scorpius now just to make up for you not caring four years ago?"

Surprise flickered in Albus' gaze but it was accompanied by a flash of shame. "I didn't want to see what you guys could be all those years ago," he muttered. "But I see it now."

She met the desperation in his expression before quickly turning away. "Yeah, well, I didn't see it back then either," she murmured. "And I'm not so sure I see it now."

He frowned. "Why not?"

Rose didn't even know how to best respond to that question, her emotions taking over her every thought as she reflected on the past four years without him, and then the three years before that she spent with him. Looking back, she had spent more time away from him than she had with him. Too much time had gone by, too much history that couldn't be changed. She couldn't even really remember what had been the reason as to why they parted ways, if there had been one fundamental reason or if it had been a series of events, if it had been one thing that either of them had said or if it had been a bunch of things, if there was a moment that they both knew it was it for them or if it had been hazy and unclear. She had thought back on that day so many times that she was beginning to think she had only distorted the memory into one that made little sense now.

But she realized that it didn't matter anymore. It was in the past and maybe that's exactly where it needed to stay. Her life was a blank canvas and was now hers to fill with whatever she wanted.

"We worked as friends," Rose spoke softly. "We didn't work as anything else."

Albus sighed. "Because you never gave 'anything else' a chance."

She gave it a chance. It was just too late.

Rose couldn't help but wonder if she was arguing with Albus just for the sake of arguing, too afraid to go after the only thing in her life that had both given her so much meaning and yet so much heartbreak at the same time. Her heart was fragile, more so now than ever before, and the idea of going after an idea, a feeling, an expectation where the outcome was merely one of hope and not factual evidence, for Scorpius could very well take one look at her and tell her to leave, And that would hurt more than the first time they had said goodbye.

She hadn't seen it coming back then. It had left her feeling blindsided and broken for she hadn't been anywhere prepared for losing her friend. She now had all the time in the world to prepare herself, to imagine how a conversation with him might end. Maybe he'd feel the same. Maybe. Or maybe he'd tell her there was a reason they had said their goodbyes nearly four years earlier. The possibility of shame and heartbreak in the latter was enough to stop her from imagining, or even wanting, the former.

Her heart was already breaking. She wasn't sure it could take any more.

"Let me just figure me out right now, Al," she pleaded, "Before I go and try to figure someone else out, too."

"Rose-"

"Please," she begged. Pausing, she added, "And please don't tell him about any of this. About me breaking things off with Chad, about why, about anything I've confided in you. Please just…I need you to not tell him any of this."

He sighed. "You don't have to worry about me telling him anything because I'm not the one who should be talking to him at all."

She sighed and turned away from him before changing the subject. He let it happen only because he wasn't looking to be isolated by her again, now when she needed her friend now more than ever.

He just hoped she'd realize sooner rather than later that she also needed Scorpius.

Rose barely slept that night, though she couldn't be sure if it was due to thoughts of her impending ex-wedding day or due to her overconsuming thoughts of Scorpius. Either way, she got out of bed just before the sun rose on that fateful Saturday morning and went about cleaning her apartment as some backwards way of keeping her mind off of anything else.

Various members of her family had insisted on spending the day with her but she had declined every single invitation. She knew they meant well, wanted to keep her busy and distracted, but she wasn't looking for company. She didn't like herself all that much at the moment, didn't like how poorly she had handled things, and she wasn't interested in having her family try to tell her that it was okay or that she had done the right thing. Maybe it wasn't the wrong thing for her but that didn't mean it was right either.

She felt so lost and broken and confused and guilty. So guilty. She knew in the deepest part of her heart that she had broken things off with Chad the first time he said he loved her. Because even though she knew there was so much of her that really did love him, she also knew that she had never truly been in love with him. She had said it back to him in the moment because she had been afraid of losing him but the ironic thing was that over time, the only person she had ever lost was herself.

The one good thing, perhaps the only good thing, that came from her breakup with Chad was that her writer's block was officially over.

The words were practically flowing off the page, one song followed by another followed by another. She had been living in a dreamworld of pretend love and hope but evidently what she had needed to get the voice inside her heart back was heartbreak. And a lot of it.

Scorpius was spending the day very similar to the way Rose was, as in he was completely alone. It was also by choice, for Ella had offered to come by with a crate of champagne so they could drown themselves in unlimited mimosas but he declined. The offer was tempting, the drinking part anyway, but he wasn't in the mood to talk about anything with anyone. Companionship wasn't going to change the fact that by nightfall, Rose Weasley would be a married woman.

He hated that it bothered him. It shouldn't have bothered him. He had moved on, let her go all those years ago.

Or so he told himself.

But if he really had, would he be feeling this heartbroken on her wedding day?

Maybe it was just jealousy or envy he felt. Maybe he admired her for finding love again and for being happy. He wanted that for himself. The happiness part anyway. He wasn't so sure love was cut out for him. He had a feeling he was destined to live his life completely alone and while he would have loved to blame her for it, hate her for it even, he knew his fears and commitment issues had been there long before Rose ever entered his life. She certainly hadn't helped matters but she wasn't the cause of them either. If anything, she was the reason he had ever given love a chance in the first place.

Of course, now he wished he hadn't. But at least there was a part of him that knew his heart wasn't completely made of stone.

Though sometimes he certainly wished it was. Because then maybe everything wouldn't have to hurt so much.

Scorpius spent the day packing up his apartment. He was scheduled to floo to America next Sunday, December 26th and he was itching to go. He had little left in Britain for him. He was ready for the next chapter in his life, one that might hopefully bring him actual happiness, and he didn't know if he had anything left inside of him to give to a life and a world that had only ever given him heartbreak.

He wasn't in much of a Christmas mood but had reluctantly agreed to spend the holiday with his family even though they were aware how not up to it he was. They knew that he was struggling, how much his breakup with Adrienne had hit him harder than he cared to admit. Not because of her but because of what it represented. He had tried his hand at an actual relationship, tried to find love again, and he had failed. And he knew there was a good chance he'd never really try again.

By evening, with an entire notebook of songs at her fingertips, Rose's heart felt lighter. December 18th would probably always be the wedding day that wasn't but she somehow knew that there would come a day where she wouldn't hate herself for it anymore. She wasn't sure exactly when that day would be but she looked forward to knowing that when that day came, she'd find a way to be okay with everything. And so, too, would her heart.

She had run out of notebooks and was in desperate need for a few more so she grabbed her jacket and ventured outside. Glancing up, she noticed the flurry of snow falling from the sky. She pulled her scarf tighter around her neck and apparated to Diagon Alley.

"Rose?"

She jumped at the familiar voice, whirling around as James and Albus climbed off their Leaky Cauldron barstools and made their way towards her. James shoved a half-empty glass of firewhisky into her hands. "Here. You could probably use this more than I could," he said with a shrug.

Rose rolled her eyes but took the drink anyway. "I'm fine, James."

He nodded hesitantly. "Are you really? Or have you just said it so many times over the past few days that you've convinced yourself you are?"

The question was a rather valid one considering she had broken up with her fiancé only two days earlier, which also happened to be two days before she was set to marry him.

"I've been writing all morning," Rose spoke softly. "It's been really good for me."

Albus' eyebrow popped up. "Back to songwriting, are you?"

She nodded. "Yeah, evidently heartbreak speaks to me," she muttered. "Well, speaks to my heart anyway."

"It always has," Albus blurted out.

Rose blinked. "What?"

Albus hesitated for so long that Rose was ready to tell him to spit it out right before he spoke. "The best song you ever wrote was 'Look to the Stars,'" he said softly, "And it was inspired by the most heartbreaking thing you've ever had to go through."

Rose could have argued, would have like to, but no good argument came to her. She knew full well that while it had been her first real hit, it had also been her best. It was still played on the radio, still hummed by people of all ages, and was still acknowledged as one of her best by the press.

"Well…" she trailed off with a sigh, "I guess if I'm forced to live my life in constant heartbreak at least I'll get a good career out of it."

"That might be the most depressing thing you've ever said," James groaned. "You are not destined for a life of heartbreak, Rosie, you're destined for greatness. And I know you'll find it."

Rose looked at him, somewhat stunned. "When the hell did you get to be so philosophical? Not to mention, optimistic."

He chuckled. "Loving someone changes you I guess."

Rose's eyebrow popped up and Albus, too, looked shocked. "You love Alaina?" the former said.

He blinked. "I…" he trailed off, his mouth hanging agape. "No. Maybe? I don't know. I didn't mean to say that."

"But you said it," Albus pointed out curiously.

James frowned, the wheels in his head turning at an alarming rate. "We've only been dating a few months. How am I supposed to know if it's love or not? Merlin knows I'm hardly an expert in that department."

Rose couldn't help the laugh that escaped her lips. "And you seriously think I am?" she fired back. "You are aware that today was supposed to be my wedding day, right?"

James' cheeks turned a light shade of pink. "Er…right," he cringed.

There should have been a sinking feeling in her stomach, or at least in her heart, but the feeling never came. The only thing that was there was understanding. And so much of it.

"Don't wait to tell her, James," Rose spoke softly. "If you really love her, if she's the one you want to spend your life with, the girl you can't stop thinking about every minute of every day, if your heart feels things for her that you've never felt before, if she's the girl that makes your life worth living then don't wait to tell her how you feel. Take it from someone who knows, it's better to listen to your heart and go after the things you want than to listen to your head and regret the things you didn't go after at all."

James locked eyes with his cousin, the awe in his expression mixing with the guilt in hers. But it wasn't he who responded, it was Albus.

"Well, if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black," Albus muttered.

Rose turned to him, her eyes narrowed in confusion. "Excuse me?"

Albus' lips pursed, a moral dilemma ping-ponging through his thoughts before he blurted out, "Why don't you tell James here the fundamental reason as to why you broke things off with Chad?"

Frustration bubbled up inside of Rose's heart almost immediately, a glare now etched into her expression for she knew that Albus was referring to Scorpius. "We aren't discussing my love life, we're discussing James'," she hissed.

"I wouldn't mind discussing yours," James said curiously with a curt shrug. "What's Albus talking about?"

"Nothing," she grumbled, attempting to turn on her heel and walk away from them.

She should have known that neither of them were going to let that happen.

"You can't tell James to listen to his heart and not listen to your own," Albus called after her in a pleading tone.

Rose stopped but didn't turn around. "I did listen to my own," she whispered. "I canceled my own wedding two days before it was supposed to happen, remember?"

"Because you were listening to your head, not your heart," Albus groaned. "And right now, you're clearly still listening to your head."

She said nothing. She couldn't. Because she wasn't sure how much of a heart she even had left to listen to. She had given her heart to Scorpius all those years earlier and he had unwittingly and unintentionally broken it. It was still broken because of him. So how could she hand the last sliver of her beating heart to the person who had shattered it into so many pieces to begin with?

"Three years ago, you were one week too late," he croaked out when she said nothing. "But now, you only have one week before he leaves for good. _Don't regret the things you didn't go after, Rose_."

She felt the tears in her eyes once again, but she couldn't be sure if it was the desperation in Albus' tone that was getting to her or his actual words.

"Er…who's leaving for good?" James muttered to Albus. "What are you talking about?"

Silence followed as Rose knew Albus was waiting for Rose to answer.

Slowly turning around, she met the confusion in James' eyes and murmured, "Scorpius. He's talking about Scorpius."

Confusion continued to settle into James' expression until the realization came and his mouth flew open. "Holy kneazles, you're in love with Malfoy?"

"No" she was quick to say. "I mean…I don't think so. I don't know. It was a long time ago. I thought I moved on, got over him, but…"

"But?" James urged.

She blinked back the tears in her eyes, trying to ignore the loud thumping in her heart but it was there rattling her to the core, telling her all the things she was so afraid to hear.

Looking up, she whispered, "But the way I felt for Chad never even came close to how I felt for Scorpius."

James was both stunned and yet not completely surprised either. He had heard the lyrics of "Look to the Stars" and at the time, he had ignored them. But even back then it had been clear that Rose had felt incredibly strongly for her old best friend even if she herself hadn't realized it at the time.

James took a cautious step towards her, a smile slowly spreading across his lower jaw. "Don't wait to tell him," he pleaded. "If you really love him, if he's the one you can't stop thinking about every minute of every day, if he's the one your _heart _can't stop thinking about, if your heart feels like things for him that you've never felt for anyone else, if he's the one you can see spending your entire life with, if he's the one that makes your life worth living, _then don't wait to tell him that you love him._ Forget about everything else, Rose and just…love him."

She heard her own words being repeated back to her and they felt like an anvil on her heart, the power of just a few sentences killing her with truth.

Because James was right. Scorpius was the one she couldn't stop thinking about every minute of every day. He was the one her heart yearned for. Her heart felt things for him that she's never felt for anyone. Her life had little meaning without him. The years she had been his friends were the happiest of her entire life. She had been in a deadbeat job, scared to take chances, scared of her own dreams, scared of any change at all, with an unknown future and an even more unknown lifestyle, and yet through all of her struggles, he was there to put a smile on her face. Her years of struggles and challenges should have been some of her hardest. But they weren't. She could see now that they were her happiest. And it was because Scorpius made them that way.

But could they go back? Was that even possible?

Too much had changed between them.

And yet, so much was still the same.

"If it was that easy, I would," she whispered.

James' eyebrow shot up. "Would you?"

She turned away from the scrutiny in his eyes. "You forget," she said softly, blinking back the tears once again, "He and I don't exactly live in the same world. Maybe so much else has changed between us but that never has. And the truly disheartening part about it is that that is something we will never be able to change."

"You're using your head again," Albus drawled.

"No, she's not," James drawled irritably, shaking his head. "She's using someone else's head because that sure as hell was never her logic before. You never gave a shit about where he came from, who his family was, what his background was like, Rose, so why the hell are you even bringing that up now?"

She paused. "Well, it's true, is it not?" she deflected.

Both James and Albus rolled their eyes in unison. "I think the only reason you're bringing this up now is because you are all out of excuses," Albus sighed. "And this is the last one standing in your way."

Rose opened her mouth to argue but no words came out because she knew he was right.

She knew that if she really cared about their backgrounds, about the two different worlds they grew up in, she would be thinking about the press' reaction. She would be thinking about how the world might view the situation, how they would judge a girl breaking off her engagement to her perfect counterpart just to turn around and jump into a relationship with the most imperfect counterpart possible. She would be thinking about how quickly the world might turn on her, how mistreated and hated she might be. But she wasn't thinking about any of that because she had learned at a young age to ignore and ultimately not care about the misinterpretations and the judgments regarding her personal life. If the press wanted to eat her alive for making a decision that made her happy that was on them, not her.

So why was she so afraid to make the decision that might actually make her happy?

She had believed at one point in her life that she was the happiest she had ever been with Chad by her side and look how easily that fell apart.

She had already lost Scorpius once. She wasn't sure she could survive losing him again.

So maybe she was better off just walking away and starting her life over again. Maybe she needed a new perspective. Maybe she needed a fresh start. Maybe she needed to be on her own for a while. Maybe…

Maybe she was just looking for more excuses.

"Today was supposed to be my _wedding day_," she practically pleaded. "I was supposed to walk down the aisle and say 'I do' to Chad, recite my vows to him and in front of my friends and my family, start the very first chapter of my marriage story. I can't just run off and tell someone else that they're the one I want when I spent a year planning to spend the rest of my life with Chad. I can't give up any more of myself. Not now. Not to Scorpius. And not today of all days."

She quickly rushed off, ignoring her cousins' protests behind her. Rushing into the cobblestone streets, the cold nipped at her nose and a shudder ran down the edge of her spine. Hurrying along, she finally entered into Flourish & Blotts, welcomed by the sound of the dinging of the bell above the door mixed with the melodies of Christmas music coming over the loudspeakers.

Humming along to "Silent Night," she disappeared off to the stationary section, perusing the various notebook options before choosing a simple teal and white polka dot pattern. She grabbed two just for good measure and headed off towards the register, desperate to get back to the solitude of her own living room as well as her lyrics.

The world, however, had an entirely different plan for her.

For as she waited impatiently in line to pay for the notebooks, the mellow lyrics of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" filled the entire bookshop and she froze. Everything faded away and all she saw was Scorpius.

_"Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
Let your heart be light  
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight  
Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
Make the yuletide gay  
Next year all our troubles will be miles away."_

Rose was suddenly transported back in time to when she had first handed the recording of her singing that song to Scorpius. She could see the gratitude and the awe in his eyes, the pain that was there fading into nothing but appreciation. She could see the two of them on that rooftop, the stars gleaming brightly overhead. She could see her smiling face and his own staring back at her. She could see an unwavering friendship and she could see love.

Even when neither of them were aware of it, it had been there.

It had always been there.

"Miss?"

Rose jumped at the feel of someone tapping on her shoulder. Whirling around, she stared at the stranger in front of her who smiled awkwardly, pointed to the register, and said, "It's your turn."

She turned towards the man behind the register but didn't move. She couldn't move, her whole body frozen with so much unexpected emotion, confusion and fear and hope and love mixing around in her racing heart.

"It's my turn," she muttered to herself, her thoughts zeroing in on Scorpius once again.

Scorpius had professed his love to her nearly four years earlier even though he knew it could tear them apart.

Maybe it was her turn to return to favor.

Or maybe telling him the truth would only tear them both apart once again.

So the question became, would she listen to her head?

Or her heart?

As Rose stood frozen in the middle of a bookshop, Scorpius stood frozen on his workplace's rooftop. He had ventured into work to pack up a few things from his desk away from the usual hustle and bustle of the busy crowds around him. He wasn't the only one in the lab for potions were a round-the-clock kind of ordeal and didn't stop for weekends but it was certainly quieter than usual which was exactly what Scorpius had been banking on.

He was tossing old photographs and knick knacks into a box when he heard an all-too-familiar voice crooning from the record player in the corner.

Rose and Chad had harmonized all of five words from "Angels We Have Heard On High" before Scorpius barked off to his coworker, "Any chance we could listen to something else? _ Anything _else?"

The new employee stared at him with wide eyes. "Oh…uh, yeah, of course," he said, confused as he flipped through the albums in front of him. "How about the Wandering Thestrals?"

"Sure," Scorpius muttered, grateful when Rose's voice ceased mid-word.

But the damage was already done.

There, he sat at his desk as thoughts of Rose in a white dress walking down the aisle with a bouquet of flowers in her hand and a smile on her face haunted his mind. He thought of the two of them kissing and being announced as man and wife, of their first dance and all of the speeches and the laughter and the love.

It made him physically ill.

So he grabbed his cloak and scarf and sluggishly made his way to the rooftop, his heart and his mind weighed down by intense emotion, so much that he didn't even know what to do with them. His eyes grazed the sky, the muted stars sparkling over him. At one point in time, he found solitude in those stars. Now, he just felt broken. That place, that rooftop with the stars shining overhead, had once been his safe haven, the only place in the world he felt at ease and comforted.

Now, it just reminded him of her.

He could almost smell her perfume, could almost see her dazzling smile staring back at him. He could almost feel her hand in his, could almost hear her sweet voice singing the melodious lyrics of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas."

_"Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
Let your heart be light  
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.  
_

_Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
Make the yuletide gay  
Next year all our troubles will be miles away."_

Wait…

That wasn't in his head.

_ He could actually hear her singing it. _

His eyes grew wide in paralyzing shock at the tender familiarity of that beautiful voice. He stood numb on the spot, the thumping in his heart growing loud and rapid. The world was moving so quickly around him and yet he was frozen in that moment of time, wanting and needing to turn around but also afraid to find out that what he was hearing was just an illusion.

Only it wasn't.

Because when he finally did turn around, there stood Rose.

Her voice trailed off as their eyes met, neither saying anything. They could only stare at each other just a few feet away as the stars twinkled overheard. Seconds, _minutes_ passed, their eyes locked in a battle of hope and confusion as the silence dragged on, only the sound of the winter breeze rustling against their cold cheeks providing them with any sort of melody.

Until Scorpius finally broke it.

"Shouldn't you be saying 'I do' right about now?" he croaked out.

She looked at him, her head slowly rocking from side to side before she whispered, "I couldn't go through with it."

Scorpius' heart skipped a few beats. "Why not?" he asked softly.

It was a loaded question, one of so many complications and heartbreak.

And yet it was the easiest question she'd ever have to answer.

"Because," she whispered as tears flickered in her eyes, "Four years ago, I fell in love with you, Scorpius. And I never really fell out of it."

Everything inside of Scorpius froze, his mouth parting as the shock overwhelmed him with emotion. Four years he had been waiting and wanting to hear those words, to know that what he had felt back then wasn't in his head. For four years, his heart loved her even when his head told him not to. For four years, he had been hoping for this moment right here, to know that the girl who had made him believe in love believed in it, too.

Only problem was, he wasn't so sure what he believed in anymore.

"And yet," he spoke softly, "You agreed to marry Chad."

She was both surprised and unsurprised by his response. It had taken a lot for her to face her own feelings. She knew that it would taken even more for Scorpius to do the same.

"I thought he was what I wanted," she murmured. "He was perfect in every way except for one. _He wasn't you_."

Scorpius sighed. "I'm not perfect, Rose. I am the farthest thing from it."

"Yeah, well I had 'perfect' and you know what I realized? That 'perfect' is completely overrated," she practically pleaded, the desperation rolling off her tongue. "I want something real, not perfect. I want the baggage and the flaws and the imperfections. I want to grow as a person, want to learn just how hard love really is. _I want you_."

Those words should have mattered to him but in looking at her, the only thing that came into view was the pain of the past four years.

"You had me," he choked out. "You had me on graduation day when you chose to be with me instead of your family. When we danced in your living room without a single care in the world. You had me when you showed up on Christmas Eve with your recording that brought light back to my dark life. When Albus found out about us and we turned to each other for all the comfort we needed. You had me in that crowd at Davenport when you sang your song and made me fall in love with you. _You had me, Rose_. You had me for years and you decided you didn't want me anymore. You decided I wasn't worth wanting."

"I was scared of wanting you back then," she whispered. "But I'm not anymore."

"Rose-"

"Remember when you once told me that looking at the stars was better than looking at your dragging feet?" she pleaded, cutting him off before he could find another way to shoot her down. "Well, I've spent my entire life staring at my feet and I can't do it anymore. But it's not the stars that ever gave me hope, it was you."

He frowned and turned away from her, looking up at those fateful stars. "The stars used to give me all the hope in the world," he murmured. "Until you took that from me."

Her heart sank straight into her stomach.

"You took so much from me," he whispered. "You took the stars, this rooftop, our friendship, my heart, our memories, my favorite Christmas song, and you destroyed them. You destroyed _us_. I might have been the one who walked away but you're the one who always seems to find a new way to break my heart just when I think I'm finally beginning to heal. You're too busy hurting me to love me, Rose."

Everything inside of her grew cold and numb at those harsh, and yet very true, words. She was the one with the exposure and she somehow managed to exploit everything about him that had ever mattered to her.

Scorpius wasn't the one who ruined them. She was.

"I didn't go out of my way to hurt you," she whispered achingly. "You were just always there. In my heart, my head, in my lyrics and my songs. The best songs I have ever written have all been about you, about how you shaped me, how you changed my life for the better. Everything you ever said to me stuck with me. Everything you ever did lived on in my memories. I couldn't get away from you. You lived inside of me. Maybe I didn't always see it, maybe I didn't always want to see it, but the pages full of lyrics makes me see it. I see now that you were always there. I never let you go. And I don't want to start now."

If only it could be that easy. If only Scorpius could reach out and pull her close to him, if only they could love each other without the baggage, if only they could get their happy ending.

But that happy ending didn't exist.

Love wasn't enough to conquer the world. It wasn't unconditional. It was just an emotion, one that was as easily dissolvable as any other. And the fact was, the heartbreaking fact was, their love had dissolved long ago. Not because they screwed up with each other, even if they did, but because they screwed up with the world.

And the world screwed up with them, too.

Scorpius lifted his gaze towards hers once again. "Four years ago, there were plenty of reasons that you and I never would have worked. And maybe we've grown up a little and a lot of those reasons have faded but there's still one reason that remains the same."

Hesitant confusion settled into her expression. "Which is?"

He swallowed the lump in his throat. "You will always be a Weasley and I will always be a Malfoy," he spoke. "We couldn't be together back then and we can't be together now."

He waited for the realization to settle into her gaze but when he locked eyes with her, he could see that the realization was already there.

She knew the world would always judge them and that there was little that they could do to fight it.

And yet, she was still standing there in front of him.

Maybe she didn't care what the rest of the world thought of them, but he did. He couldn't be the guy that dragged her down, that held her back, that kept her from her utmost potential. He cared too much about her to be the reason that she couldn't get everything she ever wanted.

"Of all the things that stopped me from admitting my feelings to you all those years ago, of all the reasons that scared me, that kept me guarded, of all the reasons that made me watch you walk away without a fight," she whispered desperately, "Never once did our backgrounds occur to me or matter to me. That was never the issue for me, Scorpius."

"It was though," he murmured, shaking his head at her. "Maybe you were also scared, maybe there were other reasons holding you back from admitting the truth four years ago, but the one thing you didn't fight me on was my name. It was an issue back then and it's even more of one now. You have a career that caters to the world, Rose. You and I both know that I can't be a part of that. You can't succeed with me in your life. And you deserve better than that."

He wasn't completely wrong for she knew full well that her music career might take a hit if the world found out not only did she not marry the perfect guy for her but that she turned around and jumped into a relationship with the opposite of perfect. But her music wasn't about the rest of the world, it was about her. She didn't need fame, she just needed Scorpius.

"And so do you," she whispered. "You've spent your entire life never feeling good enough for people, Scorpius. Well, I am standing here telling you that you are good enough for me. I am standing here telling you that I love you. I love everything about you. I probably always have. And if you don't feel the same, if you don't want to be with me, if you don't love me anymore, then just say that. Tell me you've moved on, tell me you've let me go, tell me I'm only a part of your past, and I'll go. I'll walk away and I'll let this be the last time we ever speak to each other. Tell me you don't love me anymore and I'll leave. _But you've got to tell me."_

For four years, he had wanted to have this conversation with Rose. The conversation where they both were laying their hearts on the line, admitting the truth that lived within their very soul.

Now, he'd do anything to not have this conversation at all.

"I can't do this with you, Rose," Scorpius whispered desperately, shaking his head at her.

"Tell me you don't love me anymore. Say it. Say the words," she pleaded.

"Rose, stop," he begged, squeezing his eyes shut.

"You've got to say it," she whispered. "Because until you do, I'm going to believe we have a chance togeth-"

"I can't love you, Rose!" he blurted out. "_I don't want to love you anymore."_

She froze and so did he. He hadn't been planning on saying those words. He hadn't been planning on saying any words at all. Everything inside of him was screaming, telling him to just point her to the door. Seeing her again was just as painful as not seeing her these past four years, the memories of their short time together suddenly a permanent fixture in his mind, but at the end of all of those wonderful memories was one incredibly painful one that made seeing the prior good nearly impossible.

"Do you know how hard it was to get over you?" Scorpius said in the most desperate and vulnerable way. "Not just because I loved you, which was hard enough as it was, but because I also lost my best friend. My only friend actually. You had become such a permanent fixture in my life, my bright spot in an otherwise very dark life. You made the hard stuff bearable. You made it easy for me to breathe. You put a smile on my face when I was feeling anything but joy. You were always there for me. Always. Whether it was you showing up for me on our graduation day, a day you should have spent with family and instead you chose to be with me, or when you showed up on Christmas Eve with a song, or when I got rejected time and time again by these girls who only ever saw me for a last name, or when my parents found some other ridiculous way to let me down, or when you were there for me when Albus wasn't. You always showed up. Always. Even when I didn't ask you to be there, you were there. And the one time, _the one time_, I could have really used you, you stood there and you said nothing. You did nothing. You let me walk away without fighting for me. Without fighting for _us._ And now you keep saying that you really did care about me back then, that you did love me, that you did have feelings for me, but you realized it ten months too late. It was too late, Rose. I told you that I loved you and it took you ten months to realize you felt the same. _Ten months_. And it took you four years to say it. Because you didn't want to see it. You didn't know how to see it. And as much as you would like to think it had nothing to do with our names, it did. Just because you don't want it to matter now doesn't mean that it doesn't. And I can't just wait around for it to all fall apart again. I-I can't. I wouldn't survive it."

He could feel an unexpected rush of emotion resting like tears in the back of his eyes but he swallowed them away, looking the only girl he ever loved in the eye as he told her all of the things he had been holding in for four years.

Maybe he still loved her. Maybe his heart still felt things for her that it probably shouldn't. But he didn't want to love her anymore. He just wanted his life back.

"I'm sorry, Rose," he nearly pleaded. "I just...I can't do this."

Another long silence dragged on before Rose spoke and with it came an unexpected smile.

"Y'know, Scorpius, in all those words you just spoke," she whispered, the desperation dripping off her tongue. "Not once did I actually hear you say that you don't love me anymore."

Her unwavering hope somehow stabbed a knife through his heart, or at least what was left of it. She still had so much of him, of his heart and soul and his emotions. Four long years have gone by and yet nothing had changed. His heart still ached for her every time he heard her name, every time he felt her presence, every time his thoughts turned to her. She owned so much of who he was and it would be so easy to love her again, to feel all of the things he once never thought he could feel.

But he knew how their story ended. He knew it didn't end with love. It only ever ended in heartbreak.

And he had had enough heartbreak to last a lifetime. He wasn't sure his heart could take anymore.

He wasn't sure any part of him could take it anymore.

"Four years ago, you told me you couldn't love me," Scorpius whispered, his bottom lip trembling with so much despair. "Well now it's my turn to say the same thing to you. I can't love you, Rose. I won't."

Tears blurred her eyes but they didn't fall. "You still can't say it, can you?" she whispered, looking at him with sharp eyes. "That you don't love me. You can't say it because it's not true."

His breath hitched at the truth of those words. He said nothing at first, not even sure what the right thing to say was. He had at some point over the past four years become an expert on ignoring the feelings within his heart, the dull ache too much for him to bear. And it would be so easy to just tell her that he didn't love her anymore, to tell her the one thing she needed to hear in order to walk away.

But as much as he needed her to walk away, he knew he couldn't just tell her that he didn't love her without knowing if he really meant it.

"I don't know if I still love you, Rose," he whispered honestly. "Maybe there's a part of me that does, maybe there's a part of me that always will, or maybe I let you go the moment I walked away. I-I don't know. I don't know what my heart is trying to say but it doesn't matter because I know what my head is telling me. And my heart has steered me wrong so many times before but my head never has. So I'm sorry if this isn't what you expected from me when you came here today but I can't give you what you want. I just…I can't."

The tears no longer remained in her eyes, one by one slipping down the side of her cold cheeks. "I didn't expect anything from you," she spoke between her quiet sobs. "I just needed you to know the truth. Four years ago, you told me everything that you felt, everything that was in your heart. And I just thought it was about time I finally told you all the things I didn't know how to say back then. Because even after all this time, you deserve to know that you weren't the only one in love. You were just the only one who wasn't afraid to admit it."

So much of Scorpius wished that Rose hadn't shown up that night. But there was another part of him that was grateful to finally hear the truth from her, the truth she had never said aloud to him in the past. Albus had told him how she felt, and Scorpius spent a good amount of time analyzing what it represented, but it somehow meant so much more coming from Rose herself. Maybe his heart could finally say goodbye to her. Maybe he could finally heal. Maybe, just maybe, he could finally let her go.

"Maybe we can both now just…" he trailed off, the words catching in his throat.

Another tear slid down her cheek. "Move on?" she choked out.

He looked at her and nodded.

There was so much she wanted to say but she knew none of it would do any good, knew that she had said her peace and he had said his. So she said nothing and the silence enveloped them like an icy winter breeze. They stood stationary just a few feet away from each other. And yet so much distance was there, their world of differences forcing them on two opposite sides of an invisible line. She didn't just feel him slipping away, she felt herself fading into a realm of nothingness, knowing that she was the one to blame for their dissension. He had been right. He told her all the things his heart felt four years earlier and she just stood there begging him not to, too cowardly and too afraid to see that the man that had been standing in front of her was the man she was desperately in love with.

She had pretended to move on, and maybe a part of her had, but at some point in their three years of friendship, he had stolen her heart and it was clear to her that he had never given it back.

Until right now.

"I don't know if it's worth much," she whispered painfully, "But I'm sorry that instead of just letting you love me four years ago, I begged you not to. Because I know now without a shadow of a doubt that I had loved you with everything I had. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that I've loved you ever since."

There was a large part of him that wanted to reach out and embrace her tightly, never to let go. A large part of him that wanted to scoop her up and kiss her in the moonlight, tell her that he, too, had never stopped loving her. A large part of him that wanted to believe they were meant for each other.

But the logical part of him, the part that knew his heart couldn't take any more of this, only said, "And I know without a shadow of a doubt that I have to say goodbye to you."

More tears fell from her eyes but all she did was nod. For she knew that while she regretted part of her past, she wouldn't regret coming here to tell Scorpius the truth once and for all. He deserved to know what her heart had felt all those years ago, and what it felt today, even if he didn't feel the same. Just like he had once laid it all out on the line, she did, too. And maybe, just maybe if the two of their confessions had overlapped, if there wasn't a gap of four years in between, they would both be living two wildly different lives, perhaps even together. But four years had passed and Rose knew that they couldn't go back and yet they couldn't go forward. There was only this moment right here and unfortunately it wasn't about love anymore, it was about goodbyes.

"Y'know of all the things in my life I've walked away from, you're the only one I've had to do it twice to," Rose whispered, the words nearly catching in her throat. "You're also the only one I never thought I'd have to do it to at all."

There was a lump in Scorpius' throat that made it impossible for him to speak, to say his own goodbyes, so he didn't. He could only offer her a single nod before swiftly turning turn around and staring up at those damned stars again, the same ones that would almost always remind him of Rose.

The silence came once again and while he was looking in the opposite direction of her, he could still feel her behind him, just standing there and soaking in a moment that had ended before it ever really began.

"Just know, Scorpius," she whispered, the last thing she would say to him, "That your name was never a factor for me."

Scorpius' squeezed his eyes shut, shutting her and the rest of the world out as that slow and painful ache once again returned to his breaking heart. "My name will always be a factor."

Her heart broke at those very agonizing words, words that she could tell Scorpius really did believe. Maybe he was doing all of this to protect himself but so much of her wondered if he was really doing it to protect her.

But she had nothing left to say and neither did he so all she could do was walk away.

Only when he heard the door close behind her did he let the tears fall. He had thought saying goodbye to her four years earlier was the hardest thing he ever had to do but saying goodbye tonight was so much worse. Because he knew this was their final chapter, their unhappy ending. He had wanted that for so long, wanted to be able to say he had put her in his past and actually mean it, but now that that moment had finally come, it wasn't nearly as cathartic as he had hoped it would be. And he knew that that just meant the love he felt for her had been real and raw and intense, that it hadn't been fleeting, that it meant something to him, perhaps it meant everything to him, which also meant that it was harder to let go, but now he had no reason not to. He said his peace four years earlier and she had said hers now and there was nothing left for them except to move on.

He had spent four years fretting over her, four years thinking about her, and four years loving her, whether he realized it or not, and now he could finally just lighten the weight in his chest and find a new journey to set off on. Rose would always be an important part of his life, a girl that took up seven years of his life even though she wasn't there for four of them, but there was no reason for her to have any further part of it. He was done just surviving his life and he was ready to face it. And even though the very idea of leaving her behind ached his very core, he knew it was the best, and only, thing to do.

He stood out there for hours, the tears in his eyes as he tried ignoring the blinking stars overhead. This had once been his sacred place, a quiet sanctuary he hadn't shared with anyone. He made the mistake of sharing it with Rose and it had been tainted ever since. Now, Scorpius knew there was no way he'd ever be able to come back there. There was too much of her in it, too many memories of her, some good but now there was too much pain there for him to ever see it as anything but a tale of heartbreak.

So he looked to the stars one final time, blinked back the last of his tears, and he walked away from that rooftop.

And finally, he walked away from her.

**XOXOXO**


	6. Epilogue: How It Did Work Out

**LOOK TO THE STARS**

By ByeByeBirdie

Epilogue: How It Did Work Out

* * *

December 25th. It was exactly one week after that rooftop confrontation but for Rose, it felt like a lifetime in between. She had walked away from that rooftop with tears in her eyes and spent the entire night crying over what could have been had she just admitted her feelings for Scorpius four years earlier. But when she awoke the next morning, the tears were gone and all that was left was an unexpected fire in her veins, one that pushed her full steam ahead for the next six days. She kept herself busy, very busy, for she had one final plan. Her only plan really. And if it failed, at least she could say she tried.

"You've been very quiet all morning."

Rose glanced up at Albus dropped on to the couch beside her. "I'm not the loud one in this family, Al."

He shrugged and sipped on his champagne. "Every time I stopped by your place this week, you were gone. That, or you were avoiding me."

She rolled her eyes. "It was the former," she urged. "I was in the recording studio all week."

His eyebrows shot up. "I thought you weren't set to record your next album until next year?"

"This wasn't for my album."

Albus looked more confused now than ever. "Than what was it for."

Rose glanced over at the clock. "Turn on the radio and I'll show you."

He blinked. "Or you could just tell me."

She smiled timidly at him. "Turn on the radio, Al."

He stared at her for a few lingering seconds before doing what she asked. The lyrics of "O Christmas Tree" filled the room.

Albus turned around and looked over at his cousin. "Ah, you're right, that answers all of my questions," he drawled sarcastically.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Just give it a few minutes."

"Give _what _a few minutes?"

But she didn't respond, instead closing her eyes to hum along to the music.

When "O Christmas Tree" finished, "Jingle Bells" came on followed by "White Christmas." Albus was getting both annoyed and impatient and was just about to ask Rose what was going on when the song ended and the announcer's voice drowned out his impatience.

_"That was 'White Christmas' by Theodora Matlin. Our next song is an interesting one, folks, so pay attention! It's a brand-new holiday song, only just written and recorded this week, by noneother than the woman who shocked the wizarding world by breaking off her engagement only one week ago, and perhaps this song might finally answer the question as to why. Here is 'On This Christmas Day' by Rose Weasley_!"

Those words caused quite a stir in the living room. Albus was the only one who froze in shock, but the usual chatter dissipated as members of Rose's family, old and young, all glanced at each other with looks of confusion and surprise before finally settling their stares on Rose, who sat calmly on the couch.

"You…you recorded and released a song all in six days?" Albus asked, dumbfounded.

"When you hear the song, you'll know why," Rose spoke softly and before anyone could ask what she meant by that, the lyrics filled the room.

"_On this Christmas Day, you're my gift under the tree  
You're my jingle bells, and the holly to my wreath  
You're my crackling fire, you're my Santa Clause  
You're my tinsel, my garland, and my reindeer paws  
You're the smell of evergreen, the taste of snow in the air  
You're in my heart and in my soul and in my Christmas prayer  
When I look to the stars, all I see is joy  
And you are always there  
My Scorpius Malfoy."_

If Rose thought the room had grown quiet before, it was nothing compared to the stunned silence that greeted her after her lyrics' confession. All eyes were on her, all wide and full of so much emotion, from hesitation and confusion and disbelief, but it was the matching surprise in all of them that Rose had been expecting.

It was her father who spoke first. "Is _he_ why you broke it off with Chad?" he asked in complete astonishment, ignoring the rest of the song.

"Shh, I want to listen!" Lily cried out, jumping off the floor where she had been sitting with Hugo.

"Don't worry, Lily, they're going to be replaying it all day," Rose said with a one-shoulder shrug. "I paid them a lot of money to do so."

Another round of silence followed, until Albus spoke again, his eyes not straying from Rose's. "You want him to hear it, don't you."

Rose didn't have to ask who Albus was referring to. "I want him to hear _me_," she whispered.

"How long?" her father chimed in once again before Albus could get in another word.

Rose turned towards her father. "How long what, Dad?"

He frowned. "How long have you loved Scorpius Malfoy?"

She considered the question carefully, thinking back over the past seven years. Three of friendship, four of inner turmoil. So many memories flooded her, both good and bad, but the one that stuck the most was the very first time he pressed his lips to hers. Back then, she had been bewildered and slightly appalled but it didn't' take long before she was finding an unexpected comfort in their arrangement. For no matter what else was going on in her life, she could always somehow count on Scorpius to make it all okay.

Rose met her father's gaze. "I don't know the answer to that, Dad," she whispered. "I don't know if it happened the very first time he kissed me, or when I chose to be with him instead of my own family on my graduation day, or when he told me about his half-sister who not a single other soul in the world knew about, or when I stopped calling him Malfoy and started calling him Scorpius, or when I was missing him every time he was gone on an extended business trip, or when I skipped out on Christmas Eve to be with him, or when he showed me his secret spot on his rooftop and told me to look to the stars, or when he convinced me to submit a song to that songwriting competition, or when he came with me and gave me the courage to go out on that stage, or when he stood in front of me and told me that he loved me. I don't know when it started but I do know that it never ended. I didn't want to love him, I tried not loving him. But you can't always choose who to love and my heart chose him. Chad was never my forever. It was always Scorpius."

There were several couples scattered about the room, some married and some just dating, but all of them sought out their loved one's eyes with their own and smiled knowingly.

It was in that moment that Rose knew her family approved.

"Then go turn him into your forever, Rose," her father whispered, his hand reaching for his wife's.

She wished it was that easy. But the two of them had said their goodbyes already. All she could do was wait for Scorpius to come to her.

Or wait until he never showed.

Either way, she'd have her answer.

Scorpius dragged himself to his father's home for Christmas where he was surrounded by his father, his mother, his mother's boyfriend, his half-sister and her mother, and his grandparents. After the rather sad and painful week he had, he wasn't sure being around his somewhat chaotic family was going to make his heart feel whole again but it was better than sitting at home with a bottle of whiskey alone.

Delilah couldn't stop talking about Rose calling off her wedding, for the press had spent the last week talking about that apparent devastation, speculating as to what happened and why and how. His grandfather kept asking why Rose Weasley's personal life was news and why anyone should care what that wench does. His mother kept telling Lucius to mind his language. And his father's eyes kept peering over at his son, sensing that there was something he wasn't saying, but Scorpius kept his mouth shut. He was hardly going to announce to his family that Rose had showed up at his work one week earlier and confessed her love to him. Especially since it didn't matter. It was now officially in the past and he figured the only way he was going to move past Rose for good was to stop talking or thinking about her.

Which would have been a lot easier had her cousin not showed up at his door.

"Albus?" Scorpius said when he opened the door. "What…what are you doing here?"

"And a Merry Christmas to you, too," he drawled. "Any chance you have the radio on?"

Scorpius blinked. "What?"

"The radio. I'm assuming you have one," Albus spoke hastily. "Have you been listening at all?"

Scorpius stared at his friend, bewildered. "No, my family does this thing called having meaningful conversations with one another."

Albus' eyebrow shot up. "Really? _Your _family?"

He hesitated. "Okay, seriously, what are you doing here?" he deflected. "Not sure if you're aware of this but it's Christmas and last I checked, you should be spending it with the-"

"People you love," Albus finished for him, his voice soft. "That's why I'm here."

Scorpius looked at him. "Sorry, you're not my type," he drawled.

Albus groaned. "For the love of all things Christmasy, can you please just turn on your goddamned radio?"

Scorpius was getting all ready to ask Albus why again when the other boy pointed to the living room and said, "_Go_."

With a confused and somewhat annoyed sigh, Scorpius reluctantly obliged. Returning to the living room with Albus on his heels, he greeted his family with, "Before you ask, I have no idea what Al is doing here, but evidently, we're supposed to be listening to the radio."

That earned Albus a chorus of confused stares but they said nothing as Scorpius charged over to the radio in the corner and turned it on as "Silent Night" came to an end.

"You want to tell me why we're listening to the radio?" Scorpius asked Albus.

"You'll see," he said. Glancing around the room at his family, he also lowered his voice and muttered, "And also, I'm sorry."

Scorpius' brow furrowed but before he could ask what he meant by that, the broadcaster announced the next song.

"_And here it is again, folks. I hope you like this song as much as I do because we are going to be hearing it quite a bit today. Scorpius Malfoy, I hope you're listening."_

The room grew stunned.

It was Draco who spoke first. "Did he just say…"

"Scorpius' name?" Astoria finished, her eyes on her son. "Yeah, he definitely did."

Scorpius turned towards Albus, more confused than ever, but the questions never came for at that time, the song filled the room.

And suddenly all of his questions were answered.

"_On this Christmas Day, you're my gift under the tree  
You're my jingle bells, and the holly to my wreath  
You're my crackling fire, you're my Santa Clause  
You're my tinsel, my garland, and my reindeer paws  
You're the smell of evergreen, the taste of snow in the air  
You're in my heart and in my soul and in my Christmas prayer  
When I look to the stars, all I see is joy  
And you are always there  
My Scorpius Malfoy_

_You're watching over me like a night sky constellation  
You're my rock, you're my friend, you're my heart's true dedication  
You looked me in the eye, confessed your adoration  
But I watched you walk away in pure self-preservation  
I lied about my happiness while I lived in devastation  
I hid it from the world, but from myself it was damnation  
Fast forward four years later, I reassessed the situation  
I told you that I loved you  
That was my final declaration _

_I thought I wanted him, but it's you that I need  
I felt safe with him, but with you, I feel free  
I lived with him, but you I cannot live without  
I trusted in him, but with you I have no doubts  
I gave myself to him, but it's you that I dream of  
I liked so much of him, but it's you that my heart loves  
__When I look to the stars, it's you that I see  
You can't get rid of me that easily _

_So when I told you that I loved you without limitations  
I could only hold my breath, and wait in anticipation  
For you to say the same, for your returning affirmation  
And yet it never came, you said goodbye in desolation_

_But though you walked away, my heart still beats with admiration  
My love will never fade, and that's my confirmation  
You may be a Malfoy, assumed to be a defamation  
But to me you're just my Scorpius, my true infatuation _

_So look to the stars, therein lies your validation _  
_And have yourself a merry little Christmas_  
_This is my final declaration."_

When the song ended, the room was full of stunned silence. Astoria's eyes were wide, Lucius' expression was both coated with confusion and disgust, Delilah looked almost gleeful, Draco's mouth was hanging open, Narcissa looked like she wasn't sure what to think, and Scorpius?

He was in full panic mode.

Frantically pointing at the radio, he cried out in a sharp whisper, "Did she just…say all that on national radio?"

"International radio technically," Albus spoke flippantly. "But yes."

Scorpius let out a frustrated groan as he buried his head in his hands, his eyes squeezing together tightly. Slumping down on the couch beside him, he said in a whimper, "Oh, no. Oh, no no no. Why? _Why_? Why would she do this? What the hell is she thinking?"

"She's thinking that she loves you," said Albus bluntly. "And she wanted to let the world know."

"_Why?"_ Scorpius growled, pulling his head out of his hands so he could glower at his mate. "What purpose does that serve? Why in bloody hell would she do something like this?"

"Because now you can't use the excuse that the world wouldn't approve as your only way out."

Scorpius froze at those rather direct words, his eyes meeting the accusation in Albus' eyes. "I…" he trailed off, bobbing his head from side to side in slight panic. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're a Malfoy and she's a Weasley and that is supposed to mean that you're doomed from the start, right?" Albus drawled, his arms folding across his body in his usual defensive manner. "_Wrong_. Only you and Rose should get to decide the endgame, Scorpius. And she decided to tell the world her heart's secret. So what's your move going to be?"

Scorpius didn't know what to say to that. He didn't even know what to think. He had thought that their conversation on the rooftop was it. He that that was their goodbye, their moment of closure and finality. He was supposed to be moving to America in less than twenty-four hours, not to mention moving on from her. But now, his heart seemed more confused than ever.

Evidently, he took too long to answer for it was his grandfather who spoke up. "Who says my grandson has to respond?" he growled. "This is her ordeal, not his."

"Were you not listening to the lyrics, Dad?" Draco sighed. "He was the one who apparently confessed his feelings to her first."

"Psh," he said with a dismissive wave. "That was a long time ago. Clearly, he's matured, into someone who has actual standards thank Merlin."

If ever there was a time to step up and defend the girl who changed him for the better, it would have been then.

But Scorpius said nothing. Not because he didn't want to defend Rose but because he was so lost in his own thoughts, so lost in panic at the idea of the entire wizarding world finding out that Rose Weasley fell in love with a Malfoy.

While Scorpius kept quiet, Albus certainly didn't. "You do realize you're talking about my cousin, right?" he spoke to Scorpius' grandfather, perhaps a little too coolly.

Lucius Malfoy turned his gaze on the Harry Potter lookalike. "You do realize you barged in here unannounced, right?" he hissed right back. "And for what? To tell my grandson that now the world has one more reason to hate him? We all know that there are lines that shouldn't be crossed and if you don't know that, or if you are naive enough to think there isn't a divide, that's probably only because you have the privilege of standing on the other side."

"Dad, that's enough," Draco pleaded.

"No!" Lucius barked. "We shouldn't have to stand here like this and watch my grandson be humiliated in front of his whole family! Not by a _Potter _of all people."

"The only person doing the humiliating is you, Grandfather," Scorpius finally spoke up, pulling himself off the couch and glaring over at the patriarch. "I know that you want to defend me, want to defend this family, but take a look around. We aren't exactly that picture perfect family you so desperately want us to be. We're broken and we're bruised but we are still Malfoys and that means we are strong and resilient. We bounce back when the world throws us curveballs. We get up again when the world pushes us down. We stand up for ourselves when no one else will. But what we aren't, what we shouldn't be, is critical of other people's choices when we've been known to make our own mistakes. But doesn't that make us human? Doesn't making mistakes make us better people? Make us better _Malfoys_? Why is it okay for my parents to divorce over happiness but it isn't okay for me to love a Weasley for the same reason? Don't I get to be happy, Grandfather? Don't I get a say?"

Once again, the room was plunged into total silence, looks of pride and shock staring over at the young Malfoy.

"But…" Lucius sputtered, shaking his head in awe, "I thought you weren't friendly with the Weasley girl anymore. Does she really make you all that happy, Scorpius?"

Scorpius opened his mouth to tell him that that wasn't the point, that all he was trying to say was that their different worlds weren't so different after all. But those words never came for his thoughts were suddenly consumed by Rose, her every lyric running through his mind over and over again.

Or maybe that was just the song on repeat on the radio.

But either way, her voice was inside his head. And he couldn't seem to get rid of it.

Nor was he sure he wanted to.

"She may be the only thing in the world that ever truly made me happy," Scorpius whispered.

More stunned silence.

"Do…" Lucius struggled once more, clearly fearful of the answer to his next question. He asked it anyway. "Do you love her?"

That was a harder question to answer.

As Scorpius struggled to respond, Rose was currently dealing with her own family's version of the interrogation squad.

"How long have you known?"

"How long have you been keeping it a secret?"

"Why did you and Scorpius end your friendship all those years ago?"

"Who ended your friendship all those years ago?"

"Why did you date Chad if you had feelings for Scorpius?"

"Why did you agree to marry Chad if you had feelings for Scorpius?"

"Did you know you loved Scorpius when you were with Chad?"

"Does Chad know you love Scorpius?"

"Is that why you two broke up?"

"Does Scorpius feel the same way?"

"Have you told him any of this directly?"

Rose just sat there on the couch as her various cousins and aunts and uncle and her mother and father and brother fired question after question at her. They seemed more interested in coming up with questions than getting answers so Rose just smiled and nodded at all the appropriate times until finally, the questions died down and all that was left was a flurry of eager stares zeroed in on her.

"Is this really what we all want to be discussing on Christmas?" Rose sighed. "Shouldn't we be celebrating Jesus or drowning ourselves in gifts or in the very least, getting drunk off expensive champagne?"

"We can get drunk off champagne and still ask the hard questions," James smirked, raising his glass tauntingly. "And I hate to admit this to everyone, but those two parted ways four years ago because I was a judgmental asshole who accused Scorpius of some pretty fucked-up bullshit."

Rose shook her head. "It wasn't you, James," she sighed. "For so long, I wanted to blame you, and a part of me did, but I think that conversation was inevitable. If you didn't trigger it, something else would have."

A throat cleared and Rose glanced up at Lily. "Any chance either of you want to fill in the rest of us on _what the hell you're talking about_?"

No, because that meant having to relive one of the worst nights of her life.

She was saved from having to answer when Albus appeared in the archway of the living room, his eyes seeking out Rose's almost immediately.

She frowned. "Where the hell have you been?" she drawled.

He glanced around at the curious looks on his family's faces before he refocused his attention back on Rose. There was a knowing look on his face as he said in a quiet tone, "You know where."

Her heart skipped a beat at those words before seizing up in anticipation for yes, she had a very good idea where Albus ran off to. "Did he say anything to you?" she whispered.

His eyes met hers, an expression of unreadable curiosity in his gaze, before a slow smile broke out. "Why don't you ask him yourself?"

Stepping aside, it was now Scorpius Malfoy that appeared in the archway.

Rose practically jumped up off the couch, mostly in shock and alarm, for even though she had been hoping for a reaction from Scorpius, for any reaction, what she never considered was that he would show up at her family's home on Christmas morning.

Based on the simultaneous widened eyes and dropped jaws, neither did anyone else.

"Scorpius," she whispered from across the room.

His eyes flit around the room at the curious and eager stares he was on the receiving end, but only for a moment, before he returned his attention back on to Rose. Clearing his throat, he said, "Can I, uh, talk to you for a second?"

She nodded and made her way over to him, but not before James groaned and said, "Oh, c'mon, it'll be so much easier to eavesdrop if you just have this conversation in front of us."

Rose shot him a lethal glare before grabbing Scorpius' arm and dragging him out of the room. The moment her hand had touched his arm, she felt the electric charge race through her veins. She reluctantly let go as they wound their way through the empty corridor.

Neither spoke, the silence wrapping its quiet arms around them and sucking them dry. They reached the end of the small hallway and Rose gestured towards the library. Scorpius entered and she followed. She shut the door behind her and just for good measure uttered a silencing spell so that they'd have no chance of being overheard.

"Can't believe Albus has a freaking library in his own home," Scorpius muttered, his fingers skimming the dusty books in front of him.

Rose frowned. "I doubt you came here to talk about the Potter Manor library."

His hand stopped on an old encyclopedia, his eyes seeking hers out from across the room. He said nothing at first, just staring at the girl he thought he had said goodbye to.

Apparently, he hadn't.

"Why'd you do it?" he croaked out.

She didn't have to ask him what he was talking about. They both knew they were there to discuss her song. "You were the one afraid to face the world," she spoke softly. "I wasn't."

He stared at her. "I don't think you fully understand how bad this is going to get for you," he muttered.

"I don't think you fully understand how much I don't care," she whispered desperately. "I know you said you couldn't love me, that you didn't want to love me because you feared how the world would perceive us. How the world would perceive me. I know you think that you were doing it for me, saving my career and giving me a chance to succeed. But if the world is going to hate me just because I love you, that's a kind of hate I'm willing to deal with."

"You deserve better," he pleaded.

"_And so do you_," she urged. "You deserve to be loved, Scorpius. You deserve happiness. You don't deserve to hide in shame, to keep your head down and go through life thinking that you don't matter because you do matter. _You matter to me_."

He swiftly shook his head at her in pure denial, this conversation once again heading down a dangerous path. "I thought we already went over this," he sighed. "I thought we were moving on from each other, not announcing to the entire world the details of our love story in a single song."

He was both surprised and annoyed by the smile that perched on her lips. "So you admit we have a love story?"

He shot her a look, very unamused by her clear amusement. "I admit that I thought our love story already came to an end," he growled.

"Or maybe it hasn't even begun."

"Maybe it's better that it doesn't!"

She crossed her arms and hugged them to her chest cautiously, the fear of her next question etched very clearly in her vulnerable expression. "Then why are you here, Scorpius?" she asked softly.

He stared at her. "What?"

She looked at him, her eyes narrowing curiously. "If you really don't care to see this through, if you really don't care about me or about us, if you really did think we were done with each other, then why are you here right now?"

He stared at her, not because he didn't have an answer but because he had too many.

"Well?" she demanded when he said nothing. "You going to tell me why you're here or not?"

The silence somehow grew more tense as a swirl of thoughts swarmed his mind, all of them conjoined with a certain memory of her. Of them. Of a time when their laughter got him through an otherwise dull a day. Of all the times they danced around her living room. Of the moment she gave him that first recording, of the time he watched her sing on stage. All the times she was there to squeeze his hand when he needed comfort the most. She had been his everything. And then suddenly, she was gone. There was no more laughter, no more dancing, no more music, no more comfort. There was no more Rose and with it, there was no more joy.

She had been his joy.

But she had also been his heartbreak.

And he wasn't sure he could have one without the other.

"Scorpius," she begged. "Why are you here?"

"Because," he choked out in a strained whisper, meeting the desperation in her gaze, "You wrote the most beautiful song about me and shared it with the world and now I can't it out of my bloody head. I…I can't get _you _out of my bloody head."

The words of her song, so raw and emotional had tugged on his heartstrings like nothing before. She could say a few words to him, beg him for forgiveness, tell him she loved him in every was possible, and he could find a way to wriggle out of it almost harm-free. But the emotion behind her lyrics was too hard to ignore. The raw passion and the overwhelming love was not something he could just walk away from. The song was out there for the world to hear and while he was scared about that, he was also so incredibly flattered. His head wanted him to ignore her, ignore her lyrics and her song, but his heart was saying something entirely different.

And he was no longer sure which one he was supposed to listen to.

Staring at her with a world of confusion in his eyes, he said, "For four years, I tried to get rid of you and for four years, I failed. And I'd love to pretend the last week changed everything for me, that I somehow got the closure I wanted or needed, but nothing's changed. You're still there. You're always there. In my thoughts and in my dreams and in my prayers, not to mention my radio. Your smile and your dazzling eyes and the one dimple you have on the left side of your face and the smell of your perfume and the feel of your hand in mine and your laugh and that goddamned hauntingly beautiful voice of yours_ are always there_. I can't get rid of them. I can't get rid of you! And believe me, it's not for lack of trying because I keep trying to find other things to focus on, other people to turn to, and for a while, it works. For a while, the pain of you and what we went through is gone and I feel good about myself. For a while, you're not the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and you're not the last thing I dream of before I drift off to sleep. For a while, things seem to be going the way I need them to go. But only for a while and then I hear a song of yours or I see a redhead or I look up at the stars or that goddamned 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' song comes on the radio and there you are again, invading my head and invading my heart, making it almost impossible to breathe, and the heartbreak just becomes once again completely unbearable, and all I want is out. _Tell me how to get out because it hurts too much to love you._"

He was nearly in tears and so was Rose as the barriers around Scorpius' heart finally broke out like a pool of rushing water hurrying away from a dam.

"And it hurts too much for me to not love you," Rose choked out.

His breath hitched at those words for she presented the question to him that he had always been too afraid to answer.

Which hurt more? Loving her or not loving her?

The question dangled tauntingly in his mind as he blinked back the tears in his eyes, trying to regain his composure. His heart was rattling against his ribcage, loudly and so very quickly, and he tried to desperately catch his breath, tried to stop his every limb from trembling. His head and his heart were both racing, one with fear and the other with love, and it was causing a tornado of emotions to swirl all around him, waiting to either swallow him whole or give him a second chance at life.

Or, more accurately, give him a second chance at love.

He looked at her, met the desperation in her eyes, and finally just told her the truth.

"You said I was afraid to face the world," he choked out, his head shaking from side to side, "But it's not the world I'm afraid to face, it's me. It's always been me. Because I didn't just lose _you_ four years ago, Rose, I lost myself, too. So much of who I was back then was because of you, because you made me believe in the power of friendship, because you saw me at some of my lowest points and you didn't run from it, because you were there to lend a listening ear or a crying shoulder or a hand to hold when you knew I needed it the most, because you made the impossible feel possible, because you brightened up my day with a single smile, _because you cared about me when no one else did_. It isn't a wonder how I fell in love with you, Rose. It's a wonder how I didn't see it sooner. And it's a wonder why I let you go, why I let myself walk away, why I didn't fight for us every minute of every day for the past four years, why I didn't just beg you to let me love you."

The tears in Rose's eyes shone brightly as she listened to the man she loved pour his heart out to her, all of his insecurities and his fears coming exposed at his every word. He had held it all back for so long, too afraid to love her, too afraid of the future and the unknown, so much that he ignored his very loud heart. But he wasn't ignoring it anymore. He was laying every piece of his heart on the line, telling her all the things he wanted and needed from her. And she wanted nothing more than to give them to him.

She took a hesitant step towards him, her eyes never straying from his. "Do you still love me, Scorpius?"

Another difficult question.

And yet such an easy one to answer.

His eyes met hers. "I don't know how to stop," he whispered.

She took another step towards him, her heart beating wildly out of her chest. "Then don't," she pleaded. "You said you wished you had begged me to let you love me four years ago. Well it's my turn to beg you to let me love you. And it's my turn to beg you to love me back."

Scorpius didn't respond right away. Not because he didn't have a response but because he knew the moment he spoke was the moment he wouldn't be able to take it back.

But for the first time in four years, he didn't want to take it back.

All he wanted, all he had ever wanted, was her.

"You don't have to beg me to do that," he whispered. "I've always loved you. And I always will."

And then he crashed his lips against hers.

Their lips met in a frenzied manner, the passion and the lust over the course of four years exploding inside of them both. Their bodies trembled in unison as their hands explored every inch of each other's bodies, both of them dealing with so much intense emotion to keep still for even a second. His hands were in her hair and on her forearms and around her waist and on her thighs, hers framing his face and gripping his shirt tightly and on the nape of his neck and running down his back. Their lips never parted, neither needed to stop for air as long as they had each other. He towered over her, shoving her against the bookshelf in fervent dominance. The books rattled, a few falling off the shelf, and as the books collided with the floor, Scorpius' and Rose's body collided with each other's, their pelvises thrusting together. Their tongues swirled with aggression, their moans trembled with hunger, their skin turned warm to each other's touch. It was hot, it was heavy, and neither wanted it to end.

Eventually, Scorpius pulled away, desperate to catch his breath. Neither spoke, the sounds of their heavy pants the only sound in the room as they both gasped for air. Their eyes locked in a heated fervor, the hunger evident in both of their stares.

"You still want out?" Rose eventually said, her words a breathless whisper.

He shook his head. "I think maybe I'm finally exactly where I need to be," he whispered right before kissing her again.

This kiss was less intense and more affectionate, the fear and heartbreak of the last four years fading into nothing but a yearning for one another, their hearts now speaking over their libidos. The kiss was laced with nothing but love, the one thing that had been missing, or at least overlooked, in every kiss they had once shared all those years ago. He held her tenderly in his arms, his lips tracing every bit of hers with a mere feathery touch, their bodies fitting together like a perfect puzzle piece.

This time when they pulled apart, Scorpius drew her into his arms and embraced her tightly, finding such perfection in that one small moment in time.

"I have missed you every minute of every day for four years," he whispered as he held her close. "I never want to have to miss you again."

Her head nestled into the nook of his arms, breathing in the gentle smell of his cologne. "I thought watching you walk away from me four years ago was the most painful thing I've ever had to go through," she whispered, "Until I was the one walking away from you last Saturday."

He buried his lips in her hair. "I was so scared of losing you again, of losing myself again, of having to go through another heartbreak that I wouldn't be strong enough to handle, that I let myself believe it was better to let you go than let you in," he whispered. He pulled back and looked her in the eyes, framing her face with his hands. "For the record, I was wrong. Because I don't know how to let you go. Nor do I ever want to."

She smiled feebly, tilting her head up to press a kiss to his trembling lips. "I thought it would be easier letting you go, too," she spoke softly. "And yet here we are."

He reached up to run a finger tenderly long his hairline. "And yet here we are," he whispered with a nostalgic smile, leaning over to press a kiss to her lips. "I can't promise you that I won't make mistakes. I can't promise you that I'll be perfect. I can't even promise you that I won't break your heart at times. But I can promise to love you with everything I have every minute of every day not because I know how but because I don't know how not to."

And then he said the one thing that meant more to her than an 'I love you.'

"Just remember," he whispered, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist with a quiet smile, "That you can't get rid of me that easily, Rose Weasley."

* * *

**XOXOXO**

One year later, on Christmas Eve, Rose stood behind the closed doors in front of her with a smile and not a single nervous flutter in her stomach. This was the first day of the rest of her life and she was both excited and anxious for everything to come.

"You ready for this, Rosie?" her father asked.

She shared a look with her father and smile. "I've never been more ready for anything."

He grinned and leaned over to press a kiss to her cheek. "Then let's go do this thing."

The string quarter began to play and the double doors opened in front of her. There was an entire church full of people staring at her but she noticed none of them. All she noticed was the wonderful man standing at the end of the aisle, staring back at her with awe on his face and tears in his eyes.

Rose's father gave her away and she took Scorpius' hand in hers. He couldn't help but leave over and press a simple kiss to her cheek, whispering for only her to hear, "You sure you want to do this? You still have time to be another runaway bride."

She grinned at him, suppressing the urge to press her lips to his right then and there. "I've never been more sure of anything."

He placed another kiss to her cheek, his own goofy grin spreading across his jawline, before turning towards their officiant.

Albus smiled down at the pair. "If you two mushballs are done with the cheek-kissing and the secrets, how about we get you two married?"

* * *

**XOXOXO**

"I have a surprise for you," Scorpius whispered in his now-wife's ear as they waited for Albus to introduce the new married couple.

She looked at him with a smile. "I have a surprise for you, too."

Before either could say another word, Albus' booming voice announced the brand-new Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy and Scorpius gripped her hand tight, leading them both into the venue hall. They were met with a series of loud cheers and feverish applause and as Rose looked around, all she saw was so many smiling faces. There was no judgment or hesitation or skepticism. There was just love and support and it was quite possibly the best feeling in the world.

As Scorpius reached for her hand and pulled her into him, she asked, "So what's this surprise?"

He grinned coyly and before he could answer, the band started up with an all-too familiar melody and the two of them began to dance.

_"On this Christmas Eve, you're my gift under the tree  
__You're my jingle bells, and the holly to my wreath  
__You're my crackling fire, you're my Santa Clause  
__You're my tinsel, my garland, and my reindeer paws  
__You're the smell of evergreen, the taste of snow in the air  
__You're in my heart and in my soul and in my Christmas prayer  
__When I look to the stars, my love for you grows  
__And you are there  
__My beautiful wife, Rose."_

Rose stopped short, enough that Scorpius nearly tripped over his own feet. She stared at him in awe. "You changed the lyrics?"

He pressed a kiss to her cheek and said, "Keep listening."

_"You're watching over me like a night sky constellation  
__You're my rock, my friend, my heart's true dedication  
__I looked you in the eye, confessed my adoration  
__And then I walked away in pure self-preservation  
__I lied about my happiness while I lived in devastation  
__I hid it from the world, but from myself it was damnation  
__Fast forward four years later, you changed the situation  
__You told me that you loved me, that was your final declaration _

_But though I said goodbye, my heart still beat with admiration  
__My love will never fade, and that's my confirmation  
__I may be a Malfoy, and us a defamation  
__But to me you're just my Rose, my true infatuation  
__So look to the stars, therein lies your validation  
__And have yourself a merry little Christmas  
__This is my final declaration _

There were so many happy tears in Rose's eyes as the song she wrote just for Scorpius came full circle around, uniting the pair of them in so much more than just matrimony.

"Just when I think I can't possibly love you anymore than I already do," she whispered, her arms snaking around his shoulders as she drew him close to her.

Ignoring the continuous cheers around them, Scorpius leaned over and pressed his lips to his wife's. More hoots and hollers could be heard but Rose, too, ignored them as she held her husband close to her heart.

Her heart soared at the way he was looking at her, so full of love and appreciation. They had gone through a really tough four years apart but it got them to where they were today so they ignored their past regrets and enjoyed every moment they got to spend together. They held on tightly to one another, living every moment to the fullest, reminding each other every chance they had just how much love was in their hearts. It had been a rainy day in June when Scorpius got down on one knee and begged her to marry him. It had taken Rose all of three seconds to say yes. No one thought it was too fast. Everyone they knew wondered what had taken them so long.

The press ripped them to shreds, dug up old family history, annihilated their relationship, and still Rose and Scorpius were the happiest they had ever been. Rose continued to write and record, her writer's block completely gone, and if she had lost any fans because of the man she decided to love, it wasn't noticeable to her. In fact, she only noticed how so many people came together to defend her decisions and her actions. They loved her for her, not for her love life, and every time she sang to a sold-out crowd, she only felt joy that she got to keep her career and the man that she loved without either wavering.

Scorpius was the love of her life and though they had gone through many roadblocks to get there, though they would continue to go through many more, the journey had been worth it because it led them back to each other.

"So," Scorpius murmured, resting his forehead against hers with a smile that lit up his face, "What's this surprise you have for me?"

She smiled shyly, pulling back just slightly from him so she could meet his gaze, the love in his eyes matching the love in her own.

"We're going to have a baby."

**XOXOXO**


End file.
